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PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING.

PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING

BY

EDMUND GURNEY, M.A.

LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,

FREDERIC W. H. MYERS, M.A.

LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,

AND

FRANK PODMORE, M.A.

VOLUME II.

LONDON :

ROOMS OF THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH,

14, DEAN'S YARD, S.W.
TRUBNER AND CO., LUDGATE HILL, B.C.

1886.

FURTHER ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

Page vi, line 13. For 247 read 248. Line 18. For "nearly a
trillion of trillions of trillions " read " about a thousand billion trillion
trillion trillions."

Page 16, line 23. If only cases are reckoned where the auditory
phantasm was recorded or described before the news of the death arrived,
the odds will be reduced to about a million to 1.

Page 17, line 29. If only cases are reckoned where the visual
phantasm was recorded or described before the news of the death arrived,
the odds will be reduced to about a hundred billion trillions to 1.

Page 21, end of § 8. In the numerical estimates, I have throughout
confined the reasoning to sensory experiences, and have not attempted to
extend it to the ideal and emotional impressions which were considered in
the 6th and 7th chapters. This is because a trustworthy census of strong
but purely subjective impressions of these commoner and often vaguer
kinds would have been impossible to obtain. There is, however, one
important point which concerns the non-sensory experiences as well as the
sensory, and which ought not to be omitted from the argument ; the
occurrence, namely, at various times, to a single percipient, of several
" veridical " impressions, sometimes similar, sometimes different in type.
(See p. 77, note.) It is clear how enormously this multiplication of the
coincidences in one person's history multiplies the already enormous odds
against chance as their cause.

Page 24, line 3 of note. For 40 read 39.

Page 26, line 8 of note. For 32 read 31. This correction will slightly,
but not appreciably, affect the subsequent estimate.

Page 50, case 233. The narrator mentioned in conversation that she
woke her sister at the time of her experience, and also described it to hor
family at breakfast, before the news of the death arrived. Her sister —
who probably supposed it to be a dream, and fell asleep again at once —
had no recollection of it when it was referred to some years ago.

Page 52, case 235. The narrator's first initial is G. We have applied
to the gentleman to whom the earlier account was sent ; but he forwarded
it to some one else, and cannot now recollect to whom. The friend with
whom Colonel Swiney was staying has long since left Norfolk, and we
have not been able to trace him.

Page 68, line 23. For 296 read 246.

Pages 139-41, case 296. Further knowledge and a more critical
study of this case suggest doubts as to whether it should have been
included. It will be seen that three important points — the impression of
seeing the handle turn, the getting out of bed to search, and Mr. Phillips's
statement as to his wife's having imagined herself to be in the narrator's
house— are not mentioned in the diary, but only in the account written
more than 3£ years afterwards. Moreover, it appears probable from an
inspection of the diary that the entry for Oct. 23 was not written on
that day, but after the news of the death had arrived on the following
day ; and it is, therefore, not unlikely that the description, " steps as of
a female walking aimlessly," was to some extent suggested by the news.

Page 346, line 5. For maladie read malade. With this account should
be compared the apparent instance of thought-transference in a case of
hysterical catalepsy, recorded by Dr. Bristowe in the British Medical
Journal for Feb. 8, 1879.

Page 390, line 1. For Kirkbright read Shuckburgh.

Page 393, case 419. A first-hand account from Mr. John A. Orr,
F.R.C.S.I., of Fleetwood, shows that the dream on which the mother acted
had conveyed no more than the idea of her son's serious illness, and, more-
over, had been dreamt some nights before the accident, as she arrived on
the morning of its occurrence. The case should, therefore, be omitted.

Page 397, case 424. The narrator mentioned in conversation that
the experience was a very vivid impression on waking, rather than an
actual dream. The impression was sufficiently disquieting to keep her
awake for several hours.

Page 398, case 425. In conversation, Mrs. Tandy, a daughter of the
narrator's, who has heard the percipient describe her vision, expressed a
distinct opinion that she spoke of it as a waking experience.

Page 404, case 432. The narrator mentioned in conversation that
her dreams are rarely painful or distressing, and that she has never on any
other occasion taken action on a dream.

Page 461, first line of case 499. For 1877 read 1867.

Page 469, case 505. The narrator not only told her sister of her ex-
perience on the morning (Tuesday) after it occurred, but wrote the same
day to England, expressing her uneasiness about her nephew, and asking
if anything was wrong with him ; and Mrs. Wilkinson, (of 63, Harcourt
Terrace, Redclifle Square, S.W.,) the boy's mother, remembers receiving
this letter on the Wednesday evening, while she was herself in the act
of writing to tell Miss Wilkinson of the accident. (Miss Wilkinson was
therefore mistaken in saying that her sister-in-law wrote on the day
after the accident.) Mrs. Wilkinson further mentioned in conversation
that on the Monday, while lying in a semi-conscious state, the boy
constantly asked whether his aunt had been told of the acsident. He was
much attached to her, and had been nursed by her through a serious
illness.

Page 474, case 509. We have procured an official certificate from New
South Wales, which corroborates the narrator's statement that her mother
died on June 17, 1868.

Page 513, case 556. The name of the percipient has been privately
communicated.

Page 515, case 558. We have now received a written account of
this incident from another daughter of the percipient, who was present at
the time. It was inferred that the dying man spoke of the little grandson
of whose sudden illness and death he had been kept in ignorance, from the
fact of his turning to the child's mother and addressing her in the way
described (the second account substitutes " Don't fret " for " Never mind");
but it ought to be added that he had lost a son of the same name 24 years
before.

Page 524, end of case 569. The name of the percipient has now
been privately communicated.

Page 566, line 4 from bottom. The narrator explains (Dec. 22, 1886)
that her father was " an amateur doctor " only ; he had been a solicitor
by profession, but had studied medicine.

Page 584, line 29, and page 585, line 4. For Heaton read Seaton.

SYNOPSIS OF VOLUME II.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS xxi-xxvn

CHAPTER XIII.

THE THEORY OP CHANCE-COINCIDENCE.

§ 1. Assuming the substantial correctness of much of the evidence
for phantasms which have markedly coincided with an event at a distance,
how can it be known that, these coincidences are not due to chance alone ?
In examining this question, we must be careful to distinguish waking cases
from dreams — in which latter class (as we have seen) the scope for chance-
coincidences is indefinitely large . . . . . . 1-4

§ 2. The answer to this question depends on two points — the frequency
of phantasms which have markedly coincided with real events, and the
frequency of phantasms which have not. If the latter class turned out to
be extremely large — e.g., if we each of us once a week saw some friend's
figure in a place which was really empty — it is certain that occasionally
such a subjective delusion would fall on the day that the friend happened
to die. The matter is one on which there have been many guesses, and
many assertions, but hitherto no statistics ..... 4-6

§ 3. To ascertain what proportion of the population have had
experience of purely subjective hallucinations, a definite question must be
asked of a group large and varied enough to serve as a fair sample of the
whole. The difficulty of taking such a census has been much increased by
a wide misunderstanding of its purpose . . . . » 6-8

§ 4. But answers have been received from a specimen group of 5,680
persons ; and there is every reason to suppose this number sufficient 8-10

§ 5. It may be objected that persons may have wrongly denied such
experiences (1) through forgetfulness — but the experiences of real im-
portance for the end in view are too striking to be readily forgotten ;
(2) by way of a joke or a hoax — but this would lead rather to false
confessions- than- false denials ; (3) in self-defence — but such error as may

vi SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II.

have been produced by this motive has probably been more than counter-
balanced in other ways 10-12

§ 6. First as to auditory hallucinations, representing recognised voices —
in the last 12 years such an experience has, according to the census,
befallen 1 adult in every 90 ; but it would have had to befall
7 in every 10, to justify the assumption that the cases recorded in this
work on first-hand testimony, of the coincidence of the experience
in question with the death of the person represented, were due to
chance. The odds against the accidental occurrence of the said coinci-
dences are more than a trillion to 1 . . . . . . 12-16

§ 7. Next as to visual hallucinations, representing a recognised face
or form — in the last 12 years such an experience has, according to the
census, befallen 1 adult in every 247 ; but it would have had to
befall every adult once, and most adults twice, to justify the assumption
that the cases recorded in the present work on first-hand testimony, of the
coincidence of the experience in question with the death of the person
represented, were due to chance. The odds against the accidental
occurrence of the said coincidences are nearly a trillion of trillions of
trillions to 1 16-18

§ 8. The extreme closeness of some of the coincidences affords the basis
for another form of estimate, which shows the improbability of their
accidental occurrence to be almost immeasurably great . . 18-20

And a number of further cases and further considerations remain, by
which even this huge total of improbability would be again swelled.
The conclusion, therefore, after all allowances, that at any rate a large
number of the coincidences here adduced have had some other cause than
chance seems irresistible 20-21

§ 9. An argument of a quite different sort may be drawn from certain
peculiarities which the group of coincidental hallucinations present, when
compared, as a whole, with the general mass of transient hallucinations
of the sane. The chief of these peculiarities are (1) the decided pre-
ponderance of visual cases over auditory, and (2) the immense
preponderance of cases where the figure or voice was recognised as
representing some one known to the percipient : whereas among clearly
subjective hallucinations there is a very great preponderance of auditory
cases, and almost an equality between recognised and unrecognised
phantasms, the preponderance being slightly with the latter . 22-25

Another striking point — the preponderance of cases in which the
distant event with which the phantasm coincides is death, or one of the
crises that come nearest to death — again marks out the coincidental
phantasms as a distinct group of natural phenomena . . 25—28

SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II. vii

CHAPTER XIV.

FURTHER VISUAL CASES OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT.

§ 1. Visual hallucinations may present various degrees of apparent
externalisation, beginning with what is scarcely more than a picture in
the mind's eye, and ending with a percept which seems quite on a par
with all surrounding objects. Examples of these varieties in telepathic
phantasms .......... 29-37

§ 2. Examples of completely externalised phantasms. In connection
with one case (No. 225) it is shown that a slight liability to subjective
hallucinations (which a few telepathic percipients have exhibited) need
not seriously affect the probability that a particular experience was
telepathic. Another case (No. 242) is remarkable in that the actual
percipient had no direct connection with the agent, but was in the vicinity
of a person intimately connected with him .... 38-62

§ 3. Cases where the hypothesis of illusion or mistaken identity has
to be taken into account. This hypothesis would not exclude a telepathic
origin, as telepathic illusions are quite conceivable phenomena. But more
probably these cases were hallucinations ; and if so, their telepathic origin
would hardly be doubtful. One of them (No. 243) exhibits the point of a
previous compact between the agent and percipient, that whichever died
first should endeavour to make the other sensible of his presence. Such
a compact, latent in either mind, may quite conceivably have some
conditioning efficacy ........ 62-73

§ 4. Cases of a rudimentary type — perhaps of arrested development —
not representative of a human form ; they might be compared to a motor
effect which is limited to a single start or twitch. The class is too small
to carry any conviction on its own account, but its type is not so
improbable as might at first appear ...... 73-76

§ 5. Certain cases involving no coincidence with any ostensibly
abnormal condition of the agent. (1) Instances where several percipients,
at different times, have had hallucinations representing the same person,
in whom a specific faculty for producing telepathic impressions may there-
fore be surmised ......... 77-90

§ 6. And (2) instances where a presumption that a hallucination was.
not purely subjective is afforded by peculiarities of dress or aspect in the
figure presented ......... 90-96

§ 7. And (3) instances where the phantasm appears at a time when the

viii SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II.

person whom it represents is, unknown to the percipient, actually approach-
ing him, with thoughts more or less consciously turned in his direction.
The last two examples (Nos. 265 and 266) are auditory . . 96-100

CHAPTER XV.

FURTHER AUDITORY CASES OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT.

§ 1. Cases where the phantasm has been of a recognised voice — the
words heard having been, certainly in some cases and possibly in others,
those which the distant agent was uttering. One case (No. 269) illustrates
the feature of repetition after a short interval . . . 101-108

§ 2. Cases where what was heard was the percipient's own name —
which is a very common form of purely subjective hallucination.

In most of these cases there may probably have been a certain occupa-
tion of the agent's thoughts with the percipient . . . 108-114

§ 3. Cases where the phantasm has been of an unrecognised voice.
In one instance, (No. 279) several experiences of the sort, in close
coincidence with the deaths of relatives, have occurred to the same
percipient .......... 114-118

§ 4. Cases where the impression was of a complete sentence, convey-
ing either a piece of information or a direction, projected by the percipient
as a message from without . . , • . . . 118-124

§ 5. An example where the sound heard was vocal, but not recognised
and articulate ......... 124-125

§ 6. Phantasms of non-vocal noises or shocks. These are parallel to
the rudimentary visual hallucinations ; but need a more jealous scrutiny,
since odd noises are often due to undiscovered physical causes in the
vicinity. Still, some impressions of the sort are pretty clearly hallucina-
tory ; and the form is one which telepathic hallucinations seem occa-
sionally to take. The final case (No. 291) suggests the possibility of
family susceptibility to telepathic influences . . . 125-132

CHAPTER XYI.

TACTILE CASES, AND CASES AFFECTING MORE THAN ONE OF THE
PERCIPIENT'S SENSES.

§ 1. Purely subjective impressions of touch, of at all a distinct kind,
are rare ; and when they occur, may often be accounted for as illusions due

SYNOPSIS OF VOL II.

IX

to an involuntary muscular twitch. It is not surprising, therefore, that
telepathic hallucinations of this type should be rare . . 133-134

The most conclusive examples are those where an affection of
touch is combined with one of sight or hearing. Examples . 135-139

§ 2. Combined affections of the senses of sight and hearing : one
case (No. 299) is peculiar in that the person who was probably the agent
was in the percipient's company at the time . . . 139-149

§ 3. A case where the impressions of sight and hearing were separated
by some hours ......... 149-152

CHAPTER XVII.

RECIPROCAL CASES.

§ 1. It occasionally happens that at the time when A telepathically
influences B, A on his side has an impression which strongly suggests that
B has reciprocally influenced him. The best proof of this is where A
expresses in words some piece of knowledge as to B's condition. Other
more doubtful cases (of which a few are quoted) may be provisionally
referred to the same type ; but unless A's description includes something
which he could not have known or guessed in a normal manner, his
alleged percipience of B cannot be assumed to have been more than mere
subjective dream or vision ....... 153-158

§ 2. Examples of apparently reciprocal action. They may be regarded
as special cases of " telepathic clairvoyance " ; A's percipience of B being
apparently active rather than passive, and due to some extension
of his own faculties, connected with the abnormality of condition
that occasions his agency, and not to any special abnormality in B's
condition 158-166

The cases which, on the evidence, would be clearly reciprocal, are so
few in number as to justify a doubt whether they represent a genuine
type. Supposing them to be genuine, however, their rarity is not hard to
account for ; and it may be hoped that time will bring us more well-
attested specimens . . . . , . . . . 167

x SYNOPSIS OF VOL II.

CHAPTER XVIII.

COLLECTIVE CASES.

§ 1. Phantasms which have affected the senses of more than one per-
cipient, are a specially perplexing class. On the face of them, they
suggest a real objective presence of the person seen or heard. But such
" objectivity " (unless conceived as some illusive form of matter) can
hardly be denned except just as a temporary existence in more minds than
one : it does not explain, but merely repeats, the fact that the experience
is collective ......... 168-170

In the absence of evidence (worthy of the name) that a telepathic
phantasm has ever given a test of physical reality — e.g., by opening a door
or a window — we are led to inquire how far the phenomena of collective
hallucination can be covered by a theory of purely psychical impressions.
Two views (which will subsequently prove capable of amalgamation)
present themselves : — (1) that A, at a distance, produces simultaneous
telepathic impressions on the minds of B and C, who happen to be together;
(2) that B's impression, however originated, passes on to C by a process
of thought-transference — the hallucination itself being, so to speak,
infectious 170-171

§ 2. The first of these hypotheses presents great difficulties. For our
review of telepathic hallucinations, so far, has shown that they may take
very various forms, and may be projected at various intervals of time
(within a range of a few hours) from the crisis or event to which we trace
them ; so that, supposing several persons to have been the joint recipients
of a telepathic impression, it seems most improbable that they should
independently invest it at the same moment with the same sensory form.
Nor, again, should we expect to find, among those jointly affected, any
person who wag a stranger to the distant agent ; nevertheless, cases occur
where such a person has shared in the collective percipience. And yet
again, on this theory of independent affection of several persons, there
seems no special reason why they should be in one another's company at
the time, since the agent may presumably exercise his influence equally in
any direction ; nevertheless, cases where the percipients have been apart
are, in fact, extremely rare ....... 171-172

A few examples of the sort are given; but in several even of these, the
percipients, though not together, were very near one another, and had

been to some extent sharing the same life .... 173-183

*

§ 3. AS to the second of the proposed hypotheses — that one percipient
catches the hallucination from another by a process of thought-trans-

SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II. xi

ferenee — the question at once suggests itself whether such communicability
is ever found in cases where no distant agent is concerned — cases of
purely subjective hallucination. Such an idea would, no doubt, be as new
to scientific psychology as every other form of thought-transference ; but
transient hallucinations of the sane have been so little studied or collected
that it is not surprising if the evidence for collective experiences of the
sort has escaped attention — though collective illusions have sometimes
been described as hallucinations ...... 183-184

It is in collective cases that the importance of distinguishing illusions
from hallucinations becomes plain. In illusions, the persons affected
receive an actual sensory impression from a real object, the error being
simply in their way of interpreting it ; and in the interpretation they are
often greatly at the mercy of one another's suggestions. Many historical
incidents — such as visions of signs in the heavens and of phantom
champions — might be thus explained ..... 184-186

In other alleged instances of " collective hallucination " there is no
proof that the impression was really more than a vivid mental picture,
evoked under excitement. And even where the image probably has been
externalised in space — as, e.g., in religious epidemics, or in experimentation
with hypnotised subjects — most cases may be at once explained, without
any resort to thought-transference, as due to a common idea or expectancy.
(Apart, however, from special excitement or from hypnotism, the power
of mere verbal suggestion to produce delusions of the senses may easily be
exaggerated) 186-188

It is only when these various conditions are absent — when the joint
percept is clearly hallucination, and is also projected by the several
percipients without emotional preparation or suggestion — that the
hypothesis of thought-transference from one percipient to another can
reasonably be entertained ....... 189-190

§ 4. The examples to be adduced, of collective hallucinations, not
apparently originating in the condition of any absent living person,
include cases which may be regarded by some as indicating post-mortem
agency. It is not necessary to enter into the vexed question as to
whether the power of exercising psychical energy can or cannot continue
after physical death. Whatever answer that question received, these cases
would still, in the writer's opinion, (for reasons set forth in § 2,) bear
witness to a quite mundane transference between the minds of the living
percipients .......... 190-192

§ 5. Visual examples. Hallucinations of light - . . 192-194
Various out-of-door experiences, not easy to explain as illusions 194-198
Examples of the simultaneous appearance of an unrecognised figure to

xii SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II.

two percipients, who in most instances were in each other's company at
the time. The two impressions received in several cases were not precisely
similar, and in one (No. 322) were markedly different . . 198-207

Similar appearances of recognised phantasms ; one of which (case 333)
represented the form of one of the percipients . . . 208-218

The auditory class requires special care, owing to the liability of real
sounds (whose source is often uncertain) to be misinterpreted. Examples
of voices 218-221

And of musical hallucinations ..... 221-223

The examples may at all events show that a purely psychical account of
these joint experiences is possible. It is not, indeed, obvious why hallucina-
tions of the senses should be a form of experience liable to transmission from
mind to mind ; but as regards the cases which are telepathically originated,
some explanation may perhaps be found in the fact that they at any rate
involve a disturbance of a very peculiar kind . . . 224-225

§ 6. Collective hallucinations of telepathic origin. Auditory examples,
representing vocal sounds ....... 226-230

And non-vocal sounds ....... 230-235

Visual examples. In two of these (Nos. 345 and 346) the experiences
of the several percipients were not precisely similar. Another case
(No. 349) affords an opportunity for estimating the probability of a
collective mistake of identity ...... 235-264

§ 7. The fact that in most of the examples the two percipients, B and
0, were together suggests that mere community of scene, or of immediate
mental occupation, may establish a rapport favourable to "psychical"
transferences ......... 264-266

And this conception may lead us, in cases where a distant agent, A, is
concerned, to an amalgamation of the two hypotheses (see § 1) which have
hitherto been treated separately. C's experience, qud hallucination, that
is to say in its sensory character, may be derived from B's ; but, for all
that, A may be telepathically affecting C. It may be A's joint influence
on B and C that has conditioned the transference of sensation between
them ; or, in cases where C holds no intimate relation to A, a rapport may
be established, ad hoc, between A and C by the rapport of both of them
with B — who thus serves, so to speak, as a channel for O's percipience ; and
this would even help to explain the cases where B is not himself con-
sciously percipient . . . . . . . 266-268

The conception of rapport through community of mental occupation
might explain the various cases where the telepathic influence seems to
have been locally conditioned, by the presence of the percipient in a place
that was interesting to the agent. And the idea may receive a still

SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II. xiii

further extension in cases where there is reason to suppose a reciprocal
telepathic clairvoyance of the scene on the agent's part . 268-269
Conjectures of this sort concerning the more outlying telepathic
phenomena have an air of rashness ; but the mere fact that " psychical "
transferences are possible, when once admitted, opens up a scheme of
Idealism within whose bounds (if bounds there be) the potential unity
between individual minds is at any rate likely to realise itself in surprising
ways . , , 270

CONCLUSION.

§ 1. The case for spontaneous telepathy, being essentially a cumulative
one, hardly admits of being recapitulated in a brief and attractive form.
Nothing but a detailed study of the evidence — dull as that study is — can
justify definite conclusions concerning it. After all, the dulness is perhaps
not greater than attaches to the mastery of details in other departments
of knowledge ; and it cannot be too clearly realised that what the research
requires is not sensational incidents, but verified dates . 271-272

§ 2. The present instalment of evidence, with all its defects, may yet,
by making the idea of telepathy better understood, facilitate collection in
the future ; and already various difficulties and prejudices show signs of
giving way ........... 273

§ 3. But though a fair field is sure, in time, to be allowed to the
work, its advance must depend on very wide co-operation ; and the more so
as the several items of proof tend to lose their effect as they recede into
the past. The experimental investigations must be greatly extended, the
spontaneous phenomena must be far more intelligently watched for and
recorded, before the place of telepathy in scientific psychology can be
absolutely assured 273-274

' NOTE (BY MR. MYERS) ON A SUGGESTED MODE OF
PSYCHICAL INTERACTION.

§ 1. The hypotheses contained in this note are tentatively advanced,
but may at least direct observation . . . . ... 277

§ 2. The theory which represents a veridical phantasm as the extcrnal-
isation of a telepathic impression encounters a difficulty in the fact that
when two (or more) persons are together the phantasm is usually, though
not always, perceived by both , 277-278

xiv SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II.

§ 3. This complex fact seems in the first place inconsistent with the
popular theory of a material ghost, or " meta-organism," — a theory on
other grounds objectionable ; * 278-279

§ 4. Nor can we always assume a separate telepathic impulse from A to
B and from A to C. Mr. Gurney therefore supposes a fresh telepathic
communication from BtoC: . . . . . . . 279

§ 5. But no such cases of communication of hallucinations are recorded
by alienists who have treated of " folie a deux " ; . . 279-280

§ 6. And in morbid hallucinations of the sane, no degree of duration or
intensity seems to effect this communication of the hallucination to
bystanders • . . . . 280-282

§ 7. Moreover, in Mr. Gurney's collection of casual hallucinations of
the sane, there are no collective cases which are indisputably
falsidical; . . ... . . . . 282-284

§ 8. Alleged phantasms of the dead, for instance, cannot all be classed
with certainty as merely illusory in the present state of our
knowledge . .......... 284

§ 9. It may be better, then, to fall back on observation of the experi-
mental cases, and to note that in them the percipient exercises a species of
supernormal activity . . . ... . . . 284-286

§ 10. Such activity, if pushed further, might become first telepathic
clairvoyance, then independent clairvoyance . . . 286-287

§ 11. Clairvoyant perception seems to be exercised in inverse ratio to
activity of normal faculties, and to be stimulated by influence from another
mind . . ' 287

§ 12. If this be so, we have an analogy which throws light on cases
in this book where a dreaming, or even a waking, percipient becomes
conscious of a distant scene ;...... 287-289

§ 13. And, furthermore, our cases suggest that correspondently with
clairvoyant perception there may be phantasmogenetic efficacy : . 289

§ 14. So that all the persons present together may be equally likely to
discern the phantasmal correlate of the dying man's clairvoyant perception ;
and collective cases will no longer present a unique difficulty . 289-290

§ 15. And this will hold good whatever view we take of the relation

SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II. xv

to space or matter, either of the clairvoyant percipience or of its phantasmal
correlate . . 290-291

§ 16. This view suggests test-experiments. Points to be noticed in a
collective hallucination ; ....... 291-292

§ 17. And in a hallucination induced by hypnotic suggestion 292-293

§ 18. But if the dying man's conception of himself is thus presented
as a quasi-percept to a group of persons collectively, then some cases where
there is one percipient only maybe similarly explained . . 293-294

§ 19. If we consider the indications of origin in one or the other mind
given by the dress of phantoms, we find no clear case where such origin
must be referred to the percipient's mind ; . . . . 294-297

§ 20. And the symbolism of phantoms also is generally such as may
have been common to both minds ..... 297-298

§ 21. On the other hand there are cases where the dying man's actual
dress at the moment, though an improbable one, is reproduced by the
phantom, which thus is clothed according to the dying man's conception
of himself, and probably not according to the percipient's antecedent
conception of him ;......... 298

§ 22. And the symbolism of the figure sometimes conveys true infor-
mation, or is in other ways probably referable to the dying man 299-300

§ 23. And the cases of imperfect or deferred recognition seem similarly
to indicate that the aspect of the apparition has not been determined by
the percipient himself ........ 300-301

§ 24. Moreover, the attraction which determines the phantasmal
presence seems sometimes to be local rather than personal ; as if the
percipient merely saw an apparition which was generated by causes
independent of himself 301-302

§ 25. It may be said that on this view the mass of our cases should be
reciprocal. But in order to prove a case reciprocal it is necessary that
clairvoyant percipience should be recollected, which is a rare thing 302-303

§ 26. Still further, the agent's death often prevents his recounting such
percipience as he may have enjoyed. His last words sometimes indicate*
that there has been such percipience. Dr. Ormsby's case . 303-306

§ 27. In our few cases of volu/ntary self -projection the experience seems
rarely to have persisted into waking memory ; 306-307

xvi SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II.

§ 28. And after clairvoyant dreams the fact of the clairvoyant invasion
may be forgotten till revived by accidental presence in the scene thus
discerned ........... 307

§ 29. Invasion, however, is sometimes remembered ; faintly and
brokenly by an agent waking at the time ; . . . . 307-308

§ 30. More often and more distinctly by an agent sleeping at the
time 308

§ 31. Such reciprocity seems further facilitated by a state of trance
or delirium 309-310

§ 32. Stages by which, in this view, veridical phantasms gradually
approach a reciprocal type ....... 310-311

§ 33. Power of the death or crisis of one person to evoke the
clairvoyant percipience, and invite the supernormal invasion, of another.
Parallel with clairvoyance mesmerically induced . . . 311-312

§ 34. A true classification must depend on the condition and crises of
the unconscious rather than of the conscious self . . . 312-314

§ 35. In the meantime reciprocal percipience may be taken as the type
of a fully-developed veridical hallucination ; its relation to space and
matter being as yet unknown . . . . . . .314

§ 36. Suggested analogy of telepathic with vital or organic com-
munication . ... 314-316

SUPPLEMENT.

INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. The supplementary evidence for telepathy, like that in the main
body of the work, consists of experimental cases (Chap. I.) and of
spontaneous cases (Chaps. II.-IX.) . . . . . . 321

§ 2. The spontaneous cases, in the aggregate, have less force than those
which have preceded — the chances of error in many of them being very
appreciable, and some of them being second-hand. Still, the evidence is for
the most part of a character which allows us to suppose that the essential

SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II. xvii

point, has been truly retained, even though details may have been altered
or added 321-322

§ 3. And since this evidence, which might not prove the reality of
spontaneous telepathy, is sufficient, even alone, to establish a very strong
presumption for it, it lends an important support to the cumulative
argument already presented ....... 322-323

CHAPTER I.

FURTHER EXAMPLES OF THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE, PRINCIPALLY IN
HYPNOTIC CASES.

§ 1. Experiments in the transference of tastes and pains . 324-329

Occasionally the transference seems to be from the " subject " to the

operator 330-331

§ 2. Examples of the power of the will in producing the hypnotic
condition, or in evoking particular actions . . . . 331-334

§ 3 Transferences of ideas unconnected with movement. One
remarkable record (No. 366) exemplifies a very long-continued suscepti-
bility on the percipient's part. Several of the cases, here treated as
telepathic, have been attributed without sufficient grounds to independent
clairvoyance ..... ... 334-348

CHAPTER II.

IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES.

§ 1. Examples of spontaneous thought-transference of a tolerably
literal kind, several of which suggest a fugitive faculty of percipience
developed by illness 349-362

§ 2. Examples of an apparently abnormal intuition of the approach
or proximity of certain persons ...... 363-365

§ 3. Cases where the " agency " is difficult or impossible to assign,
and which recall the Greek notion of <f>t)M .... 365-370-

§ 4. Emotional impressions (involving in one case — No. 391 — distinct
physical discomfort) which the percipients connected at the moment with
particular individuals ........ 370-374

VOL. II. b

iii SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II.

§ 5. Emotional impressions not so connected . . . 374-376
§ 6. Examples of motor effects ..... 376-379

CHAPTER III.
DREAMS.

§ 1. Examples of simultaneous dreams corresponding in con-
tent 380-383

§ 2. Examples of dreams which have seemed to represent some
thought or mental picture in the mind of a waking agent . 383-393

§ 3. Examples of dreams which have directly corresponded with a
real event (usually death) that befell the agent . , . 393-401

§ 4. Examples of pictorial dreams with a similar correspondence ;
in many of which the dreamer has invested the idea with original
(symbolic or fantastic) imagery ...... 401-428

§ 5. Examples of dreams that may be described as telepathically
clairvoyant, in several of which (Nos. 481-4) the object prominently
presented has been a letter ....... 428-448

CHAPTER IV.

" BORDERLAND " CASES.

§ 1. First-hand cases of rather remote date : Visual cases 449-459

Auditory cases ........ 459-461

§ 2. First-hand and more recent cases : Visual cases . 461-470

Auditory cases . . . . . . . . 470-474

§ 3. A group of first-hand cases taken from printed sources 474-477

§ 4. Second-hand cases from informants who were nearly related to

the original witnesses ........ 477-496

§ 5. And from informants who were not so related . . 496-508

SYNOPSIS OF VOL. II. xix

CHAPTER V.

VISUAL CASES.
§ 1. First-hand death-cases 509-523

§ 2. First-hand cases where the conditioning event on the agent's side
was something other than death ...... 523-532

§ 3. Second-hand cases from informants who were nearly related to
the original witnesses. In connection with one of these cases (No. 583)
some remarks are made on the Scotch " second sight" ; another case (No.
586) illustrates the difference between the right and the wrong sort of
transmitted evidence . ....... 532-542

§ 4. Second-hand cases from informants who were not nearly related
to the original witnesses ....... 543-558

§ 5. Ancient cases, which, by rare exception, were recorded in such a
way as to have permanent value ...... 558-560

CHAPTER VI.

AUDITORY AND TACTILE CASES.

§ 1. Cases where the impression was of distinct words . 561-568

§ 2. Cases where the impression apparently represented what was

actually in the agent's ears at the time .... 568-570

§ 3. Non-vocal cases ....... 570-574

§ 4. Tactile cases 574-576

A case suggesting a peculiar sympathy of physical condition 576-577

CHAPTER VII.

CASES AFFECTING MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENT'S
SENSES 578-589

CHAPTER VIIL

RECIPROCAL CASES , . . . . % * 590-599
VOL. ii. b 2

xx SYNOPSIS OF VOL II.

CHAPTER IX.

COLLECTIVE CASES.
§ 1. Three outlying cases . ••'..« • • • 600-603

§ 2. Visual cases, apparently connected with the condition of a distant
agent, occurring to percipients who were apart . . . 603-607

§ 3. And to percipients who were together . . . 607-623

§ 4. Visual cases where it is doubtful whether there was any "agency"
on the part of the person whom the phantasm represented . 623-630

§ 5. Auditory cases, where the impression was of a recognised
voice .......... 631-634

§ 6. And where the impression was of inarticulate or non- vocal
sounds 634-641

ADDITIONAL CHAPTER
OF CASES RECEIVED TOO LATE FOR INSERTION IN THEIR PROPER PLACES.

§ 1. Experimental cases —

Reproduction of diagrams . . . . . 642-653
Transference of ideas of numbers, words, and

objects ' . 653-666

Transference of tastes 666-669

Transference of ideas below the threshold of

consciousness ...... 669-671

§ 2. Transitional cases —

Production of visual phantasms at a distance . 671-676
Hypnotic effects at a distance .... 676-687

§ 3. Spontaneous cases of various types. The last two
(Nos. 701 and 702) afford a specially good
illustration of the psychological identity of
dreams and hallucinations . 687-705

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES ...... 707-722

ANALYSIS OF THE TABLE 723

INDEX . . - . . 725-733

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

VOLUME II.

Page 13, line 13 from bottom. " One in every 90 of the population."
The probability that the ratio -fa, observed in the specimen-group, may be
fairly assumed as correct for the whole population, admits of precise
determination. A general idea of its degree of correctness may be
obtained from the following analogue, which I owe to Mr. F. Y. Edge-
worth. Suppose 5680 balls to be drawn from a bag containing immense
numbers of black and white balls, mixed in a certain ratio. If the real
ratio of black balls to the total be g^r, the odds against our drawing so
small a proportion of black balls as ^ — i.e., the odds against the ratio
appearing to be ^ — are about 10 to 1. If the real ratio be ^\j, the odds
against its appearing to be so small as -fa are about 500 to 1. If the real
ratio be ^, the odds against its appearing to be so small as -fa are more
than 100,000 to 1. It will become obvious, I think, as we proceed, that
even in this last contingency — on the violently improbable assumption
that the true ratio of hallucines in the population is double that observed
in the specimen group — my general conclusion would remain safe, even for
the auditory cases ; and a fortiori for the visual cases, where a far smaller
ratio is substituted for fa. But it is enough to notice that practically, as
the ratio for the population is as likely to be less than the specimen-ratio
as greater, and as it cannot differ from it very materially on either side,
the specimen-ratio may safely be used.

Page 24, line 1. For 13 read 12, and for 6 read 7. Lines 17-22.
Among the " recognised " visual cases, I include three where the figure
seen did not represent the person who was probably the agent. I do not
reckon on either side two cases of mis-recognition, which might equally
well be described as partial recognition ; nor three cases where the recogni-
tion was retrospective; nor four "collective" cases where one of the per-
cipients recognised the agent, but the other was a stranger to him. I
reckon in the unrecognised class three cases where the percipient was a
stranger to the agent, but described his appearance correctly. Among
the " recognised " auditory cases, I include two where the voice heard was
not that of the supposed agent. I do not reckon on either side case 279;
nor case 507 where the recognition was retrospective ; nor the case of -
mis-recognition, No. 570.

Page 25, note. The slight difference from the numbers given in
Vol. I., pp. 392 and 498, is due to cases received since those pages were
printed off.

xxii ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

Page 26, lines 12 and 13. For 399 read 401, and for 303 read 304.

Page 27. " The only way of meeting this argument," <fcc. In more
technical language, the point stands thus. The determination of the
d, posteriori probability that certain events took place by chance depends
not only on the " objective " probability of the occurrence of such events
under a regime of chance, but on d priori probabilities depending (except
in imaginary problems about bags and balls) on what Professor A. Marshall
has felicitously called " that abstract and essence of past experience which
is on the one side science, and on. the other practical instinct." And as
Mr. F. Y. Edgeworth remarks, in writing to me on this topic, " Scratches
or ordering boots might be as unique experiences as death, or at any rate
not materially more frequent ; yet all would agree that the d priori
probability of a causal connection between a phantasm and ordering boots
is nil; while as to death, many would think differently." Now in
applying this remark, it must be remembered that that which alone could
make a number of the coincidences — whether between phantasms and
orderings of boots, or between phantasms and deaths — explicable as
accidental occurrences, would be the universal though unknown and
unnoticed prevalence of spectral illusions. This is itself a huge im-
probability, determined as such by the relation of the statistical results of
my census to complex d, priori probabilities concerning facts of human
memory and testimony. And what I have implied in the text is simply that
it is an improbability so huge as to outweigh the a priori improbability of a
causal connection between phantasms and deaths, though not perhaps the
a priori improbability of a causal connection between phantasms and
orderings of boots.

Page 37, first note. Since this note was printed, I have met with an
interesting case of the peculiar sensation described, in connection with
purely subjective hallucinations. Mr. J. Russell Lowell tells me that in
past years he had frequent hallucinations of vision, of both the recognised
and the unrecognised sort, which greatly interested him ; and that the
experience was ushered in (he believes invariably) by a feeling of marked
chill, which seemed to ascend from the feet to the head.

Page 37, second note. Mr. Lowell also tells me that though the figures
he saw were sometimes quite natural-looking, at other times they were of
the semi-transparent sort here described, allowing the wall or furniture to
be seen through them. He spoke of these as looking as if composed of
" blue film " — a description which is of great interest, when taken in con-
nection with some of the telepathic cases, e.g., Nos. 210, 311, 315,
485, 555.

Page 39, line 2 from bottom. For Act read Acte.

Page 42, case 226. In conversation, General H. informed Mr. Pod-
more that the native who was with him at the time of his experience was
not facing the figure, but still would probably have been aware of the
presence of a real person who occupied the spot where the figure was seen.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. xxiii

Page 66 note. For case 197 read cases 197 and 509.

Page 67, case 245. The narrator has added, in conversation, that he
was in Huddersfield for the day only, and that his sudden resolve necessi-
tated his telegraphing to the friends with whom he was staying. For the
moment he does not know the address of these friends; but he hopes to
procure us their recollections as to the receipt of this telegram and his
subsequent explanation of it.

Page 71, case 249. The following corroboration is supplied by Mr.
and Mrs. Coates, of 156, Waperton Road, Bradford, who were with Mr.
Carr at the time : —

"June 23, 1886.

" We shall only be able to confirm the statement of Mr. T. Carr. So
far as we can remember, while we were sitting in the room, T. C. came
from his chair to the window ; and, while looking out of the window, he
made the remark, ' Ah, there is [X.] coming to see us,' and stepped back
from the window, waiting to hear a knock at the door, which however did
not come. T. C. remarked that he must have gone up the yard, and looked
at the clock to see what time it was. We afterwards heard that at the
time we thought [X.] was in the yard, he was just about dying.

"CHARLES COATES.
" ANNIE COATES."

In conversation, Mr. Coates gave the time as about 4 p.m. ; and spoke
of Mr. Carr's consulting his watch.

Page 72, case 250. In conversation I have learnt from Mr. Schofield
that he had been absent from home for some days — which explains his
having heard nothing of the illness. The deceased had a warm affection
for his mother.

Page 85, case 257. Since this case was printed, a hallucination
representing the same person has been seen by a fourth percipient. Mrs.
•Glanville writes from Shute Haye, Walditch, Bridport, on Aug. 23, 1886 : —

" After breakfast this morning, I was outside the breakfast-room
window, looking about, when I saw Mrs. Stone walking up one of the paths
by the side of the lawn. I followed her. The path is long and winds
round. I saw her turn the corner into a path that led through the orchard,
but when I came there I could not see her. I wondered at her walking
so quickly as to go out of sight, and strolled on, following the path, which
led me back to the house. Here I saw Mrs. Stone talking to the gardener.
She was surprised when I asked her how I could have missed her, and
said she had not been walking at all, had not left her plants. Well, I saw
her, her black dress, her white cap, her walk, Mrs. Stone certainly, but
whether out of herself, or by an impression on my brain, I cannot telL
— but I never saw anything more distinctly." [A plan of the paths was
enclosed.]

Mrs. Stone writes, Aug. 25, 1886 :—

" You wish me to give an account of my proceedings when Mrs. Glan-

xxiv ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

ville saw my double. About 10 on the morning of Monday, August 23rd,
I had gone direct from the house to water some flowers in a greenhouse
marked in Mrs. Glanville's plan. My mind was rather disturbed at not
hearing from my son. I was watering in a rather dazed, mechanical way,
but did not lose consciousness. Walking from the place I met Mrs. Glan-
ville, who said, ' How could you get here without my seeing you ? ' I had
not been near the spot where she saw me."

The percipient in this case has had one other visual hallucination
representing a living person, which was very likely telepathic. She thus
describes it : —

" I remember one experience of the same sort happening when I was a
girl. I certainly did see an old gentleman in the street who was then on
his death-bed, but nobody would believe it. He was standing outside his
shop-door ; there were two other men with him. I can see him now in
my mind's eye — a tall thin man ; I knew his face quite well. When I
said at dinner that Mr. Worth was better, for I had seen him in the street,
my father told me he had just called, and Mr. Worth was very ill, in fact
dying, and I must be mistaken."

Page 112, case 277. The narrator has explained to me that her
mother was taken ill on the Saturday night, and lay all that night and the
next day on the sofa, muttering to herself, but not thought to be dying.

Page 116, case 281. We have procured, from the Acting Registrar-
General at Fiji, a certificate which shows that the death took place on
Sept. 8, 1875. But we learn from the Astronomer-Royal that, until
recently, the nomenclature of days of the month at Fiji followed the rule
of Australia. Sept. 8, 1875, therefore, began there nearly 12 hours before
it began here ; so that unless the deceased was bathing late in the evening,
the narrator's experience must have followed the death by more than 12
hours. This, of course, is on the supposition that the experience was
really on the night of the 8th, and not of the 7th ; in which latter case
the coincidence might have been exact. The narrator is sure that the 8th
was the date — not, however, from any independent recollection of the
number 8, but on the ground that she referred to her diary after she heard
of the death, and verified the coincidence, which she then mentioned to
one or two persons. But it will be seen from her account that, for aught
she knew, the death might have occurred on the 7th ; and therefore the
days would have seemed to her to have very probably coincided if the day
which she found noted in her diary was also the 7th. Should the diary
ever be found, the point may be cleared up.

Page 123, case 287. Since this case was printed, I have learnt from
Dr. Joseph Smith that he was seeing Mrs. Gandy nearly every day. He
nevertheless feels pretty confident that his experience was not due to any-
thing that he had heard or observed — arguing that that explanation of it, if
it had been the true one, would have occurred to him at the time. But
extremely slight and transient impressions may, for aught we know, serve
as the germ of subsequent hallucinations, just as they may serve as the

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. xxv

germ of subsequent dreams ; and the case ought not, I think, to have
received an evidential number.

Page 199, case 319. Both witnesses are positive that the case was not
one of mere illusion ; though it was dusk, there was enough light for the
clergyman to observe that the figure outside was rather badly dressed,
besides differing from Dr. Cant in being considerably stouter and wearing
a beard. They discussed the matter the same evening, at about 1 1 p.m.
In the interval, something had occurred by which Dr. Cant tells us that
he was a good deal impressed. At about 8 p.m. he was called to visit
a stranger, who was dying, and who had expressly desired his attend-
ance ; and he was startled by the close (though not exact) resemblance
of this man to the hallucinatory figure.

Page 209, case 326. Mrs. R.'s sister, Miss Norman, of Stone, Stafford,
has sent the following independent testimony, dated June 21, 1886 : —

" A.fter the lapse of so many years, the statement I now write is all
that I can remember of seeing my father and mother walking together, in
the year 1843, in the village where we then resided. At the time, my
father was from home, ver^ ill ; and my mother, to the best of my remem-
brance, was out on that day. I have a very vivid recollection of the
vision, which I think remarkable. My parents were walking together
by the churchyard wall, close to the parsonage. This happened in September,
1843."

Mrs. R. writes that she is confident that neither she nor the man-
servant saw her mother's figure : — " He saw just what I saw — my father
entering the church by the vestry door." After so long an interval, it is
likely enough that the sisters' accounts might differ, even if their expe-
riences had been identical. But it seems quite possible, on the analogy of
several other cases, that the simultaneous hallucinations were not exactly
identical.

Page 237, line 24. After Mr. R. Hodgson insert " and later the
present writer."

Page 247, lines 4, 5. The testimony in question has now been
obtained, and is as follows : —

" Lakeside Cottages, Newby Bridge.

"June, 1886.

" It was one evening, about 4 years ago, that I sat in the kitchen, at Lin-
dale Parsonage, at supper, and looking at the window I saw, at the side of the
blind, which was not hanging quite straight, a very pale face looking at
ine. It was turned sideways when I first saw it, and thinking it was one of
the young men from the village come up to make game of us, I made a face
at it ; then it turned full face towards me, and I saw that it was the face of
Mrs. John Robinson, my present husband's first wife. It looked very pale.
I watched it with the other servants for about 3 minutes perhaps, and then
it dropped down and disappeared. I could see all round it,1 so that I

1 Compare cases 553 and 572.

xxvi ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

could see that it was not a real face, and it was too close to the window
for that. It looked as if resting on the sill.

" I have never on any other occasion seen anything which was not
really there. " HELEN ROBINSON."

Page 297, line 14. Before p. 546 insert Vol. I.

Page 336, case 366. The phenomena of mesmeric rapport described in
this case strongly suggest a specific influence exercised by the operator, of
a sort not as yet recognised in the various scientific theories of hypnotism ;
but a more decisive proof of such an influence is of course afforded if the
same operator has produced kindred effects on more than one " subject."
After the case in the text was printed, I heard from Mrs. Pinhey of
another occurrence which, from this point of view, is of the greatest
interest, besides supplying a parallel to the examples of the telepathic
production of hypnotic sleep given in Vol. I., p. 88, and below, pp. 679-87.
During the period when the events described in case 366 were proceeding,
Mrs. Pinhey was staying with some friends at Pakenham, and was
requested by Sir Walter Trevelyan, one of the party, to try to induce
mesmeric sleep in another guest, Miss Lofft. Mrs. Pinhey was rather
unwilling, but at last consented.

" The experiment was quite successful as far as it went. Miss L. soon
went off into the sleep and was laid upon a bed in that state. I
believe she did not wake for some hours. The Trevelyans and Miss Loft't
were to leave the next day, and before they did so Sir Walter startled me
by making the following request : ' Would I, as an experiment and to
oblige him, undertake to retire at a certain hour, which he fixed, that
evening, and make the usual passes with an intention of again mesmerising
Miss Lofft, who would by that time be with him and his wife at a hotel
at Lincoln or Leicester, or some town which he named but which I have
now forgotten 1 ' Again I hesitated. * * However, curiosity, and a
comfortable assurance that there could be nothing in it, gradually con-
quered my repugnance, and I promised to make the attempt, heartily
hoping that it might not succeed. The Trevelyans and Miss Lofft all left
at about noon for the railway station, and travelled by train to their
destination. The day passed as usual, and I began to feel more confidence
and could almost laugh at my former fears. When the appointed time
came, I retired quietly to my own room, and, imagining Miss Lofft before
me, I made the usual passes 1 just as I had done the evening before, and for
about the same length of time. It appeared very absurd and I could not
help laughing at the situation ; but I kept my own counsel and said
nothing to anyone.

" A day or two later, when I had returned home, a letter came for me
from Sir Walter Trevelyan. It informed me in a few words that at the
preconcerted hour Miss Lofft was sitting at table after tea or supper, that
she suddenly began to feel very drowsy, said her sensations were the same
as when she was being mesmerised, and that at last she slept much as she
had done the evening before, though, I think, less deeply and for a shorter
time. I confess that I was so astonished at this news, and found it so
disagreeable and bewildering, that I destroyed the letter, an act I have

1 Possibly effective indirectly, as aiding concentration of attention.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. xxvii

often since regretted, and said as little as possible about the matter to
anyone. I instinctively felt that it would be commonly regarded as so
incredible that I had better say nothing about it, lest it should throw
discredit upon the other experiments. Nevertheless, the main facts are
perfectly true, though I will not undertake to answer for every detail.
For instance, it is certainly true that Miss Lofft was affected in the way I
have described, but I cannot remember to what exact extent."

[A niece of Miss Lofft tells us that she remembers Mrs. Pinhey mes-
merising her aunt at Pakenham ; but she was not told of the subsequent
experiment.]

Of course if this occurrence stood alone, the most natural hypothesis
would be that Sir Walter Trevelyan had in some way betrayed what was
being attempted, and that the trance was caused by suggestion and
expectancy. But in view of other cases of the same sort, and especially of
the recent French records, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he was
sufficiently on his guard not to mar his own carefully-planned experiment,

that the incident was genuinely telepathic.

Page 413, case 445. We find from the Register of Deaths that the
lady's death took place -on March 2, 1843. The narrator tells me that
there was no immediate apprehension of it — that, for aught he knew,
" she might have lived for 20 years." He thinks, but cannot be sure,
that his eyes were open.

Page 422, lines 4 and 16. For Harley read Holies. The note to
this case (within brackets) is not quite correct, as a sailing-vessel bound
for Melbourne might have 6 weeks' start, and still be outstripped by a
steamer. But even with this correction, the time of the second dream
cannot be brought into correspondence with any customary hour for a
London funeral.

Page 460, second note. For 568 read 569 ; for 639 read 638 ; for 654
read 653.

Page 485, case 522. A sister of the narrator's, who had also heard of
the experience from her father's lips, confirms the account given.

Page 511, case 552. In conversation, Mrs. Rooke mentioned that
she saw the figure as she was coming out after prayers, all the students
being behind her. This is important, as telling against the hypothesis of
mistaken identity. She regards that hypothesis as out of the question, the
recognition of the face being complete. The dress was a grey suit with
black-barred pattern, and cap to match, such as the young man had been
used to wear at the college. Mrs. Rooke did not mention her experience
to her husband, not liking to appear superstitious ; but both he and she
agree that she mentioned it as soon as the news of the death arrived,-
which was about 6 weeks later ; the words " many months " in her
account seem therefore to be a slip.

Page 612, note. Omit 659, and add cases 30, 190, 198, 495, 530,
537, 591.

e 2

XIII.]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE.

§ 1. AN issue has now to be seriously considered which I have
several times referred to as a fundamental one, but which could
not be treated without a preliminary study of the subject of sensory
hallucinations. That, as I have tried to show, is the order of
natural phenomena td which " phantasms of the living " in
general belong ; they are to be regarded as projections of the
percipient's brain by which his senses are deceived. We have
further found that in a certain number of cases — which may be
taken as representing the still larger number to be cited in the
following chapters — a phantasm of this kind is alleged to have
coincided very closely in time with the death, or some serious crisis
in the life, of the person whose presence it suggested. The question
for us now is whether these coincidences can, or cannot, be ex-
plained as accidental. If they can, then the theory of telepathy —
so far as applied to apparitions — falls to the ground. If they
cannot, then the existence of telepathy as a fact in Nature is proved
on the evidence ; and the proof could only be resisted by the
assumption that the evidence, or a very large part of it, is in its
main features untrustworthy. It is very necessary to distinguish
these two questions — whether the evidence may be trusted ; and if
trusted, what it proves. It is the latter question that is now before
us. The character of the evidence was discussed at some length in
the fourth chapter, and is to be judged of by the narratives quoted
throughout the book. In the present chapter it is assumed that
these narratives are in the main trustworthy ; that in a large t
proportion of them the essential features of the case — i.e., two marked
experiences and a time-relation between them — are correctly recorded.
Here, then, is the issue. A certain number of coincidences of a
particular sort have occurred: did they or did they not occur by

VOL. II. B

2 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

chance ? Now there are doubtless some who do not perceive that this
question demands a reasoned examination at all. They settle it d
priori. " One is constantly coming across very startling coincidences,"
they observe, " which no one thinks of ascribing to anything but
chance; why should not these, which are no more startling than
many others, be of the number ? " This idea need hardly detain us :
the point in our cases is, of course, not that the coincidence is start-
ling l — that alone would be insignificant — but that the same sort of
startling coincidence is again and again repeated. That is clearly
a fact which demands treatment by a particular method, often vaguely
appealed to as " the doctrine of chances." The actual application of
that doctrine, however, even to simple cases, seems to require more
care than is always bestowed upon it.

Especially is care required in the simple preliminary matter of
deciding, before one begins to calculate, what the subject-matter of
the calculation is to be — what precise class of phenomena it is to
which the doctrine of chances is to be applied. I need only recall
Lord Brougham's treatment of his own case (Vol. I., pp. 396-7). His
attempted explanation, as we saw, entirely depended on his miscalling
his experience, and referring it to the class of dreams — a class
numerous enough, as he rightly perceived, to afford scope for numbers
of startling coincidences. And his remarks illustrate what is really a
very common outside view of psychical research. Dreams, and
hallucinations, and impressions, and warnings, and presentiments — it
is held- — are the " psychical " stock-in-trade ; and these phenomena
are all much on a par, and may all be shown by the same arguments
to be undeserving of serious attention. There has been the more
excuse for this view, in that those who have claimed objective validity
for what others dismiss as purely subjective experiences have often
themselves been equally undiscriminating. Even this book might

1 It is, however, something to get even the startling character of the coincidence
admitted. For there are writers of repute who seem to think that the whole occurrence
receives a sufficient rationalistic explanation when some plausible subjective cause for the
hallucination has been suggested. The Abbe" de St. Pierre, after telling the well-known
story of Desfontaines' appearance to his friend Bezuel, at the time of the former's death
by drowning, and while the latter was apparently in a swoon, opines that the swoon was
the cause of the apparition ; and Ferriar, who agrees with the Abbe' in this, and adds, " I
know from my own experience that the approach of syncope is sometimes attended with
a spectral appearance, " agrees with him also in leaving the little detail of the drowning
wholly out of account. So with respect to the story told by Baronius, of the appearance
of Ficino, at the time of his death, to Michael Mercato, who was studying philosophy.
Ferriar (instead of making inquiry into the evidence of dates, which would show the story
to be spurious) explains that Mercato's study of philosophy may have revived the idea of
his friend in a vivid manner. It would certainly be a very vivid manner that could
kill the friend at a distance.

xin.] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 3

lead a critic who confined his perusal to the headings of the chapters
to imagine that dreams form a corner-stone of the argument ; and in
admitting that topic at all, we have so far laid ourselves open to
misunderstanding. Thus a distinguished foreign critic of our efforts
thought the subjective nature of what we regard as telepathic
incidents sufficiently proved by the suggestion that " any physician
will consider it quite within the bounds of probability that one per
cent, of the population of the country are subject to remarkably vivid
dreams, illusions, visions, &c,," and that each of these persons is
" subject to a dream, or vision once a week."1 It is obvious enough
that in circles whose members have " spectral illusions " of their
friends as often as once a week, the approximate coincidence of one of
these experiences with the death of the corresponding person will be
an insignificant accident. But we have not ourselves met with any
specimen of this class ; and the present collection comprises first-hand
accounts of recognised apparitions, closely coinciding with the death of
the original, from 109 percipients, of whom only a small minority can
recall having experienced even a single other visual hallucination than
the apparition in question.2 Once again, then, let me repeat that,
though this work connects the sleeping and the waking phenomena in
their theoretic and psychological aspects, it carefully and expressly
separates them in their demonstrational aspect. The extent to which
either class demonstrates the reality of telepathy can only be known
through the application of the doctrine of chances ; but the application

1 Another trap lies in the word hallucination (see Vol. i., pp. 458-9) ; which in
this book is strictly limited to sensory affections, but which common usage often
applies to purely mental errors. But for this Equivoque, an eminent physiologist would
perhaps hardly have thought he made a point against us iu the remark— a rather rash
one from any point of view — that our evidence is manifestly derived for the most part
" from a class of persons given to hallucination, especially clergymen and women, who
are naturally inclined to believe marvels." (Deutsche Rundschau for January, 1886, p. 45.)
Among 509 informants from whom I have received accounts of apparently subjective
hallucinations of sight and hearing, I find the proportion of females to males almost
exactly 3 to 2, and clergymen most sparsely represented. Of the 527 percipients
concerned in the hallucinations of sight and hearing which are included as telepathic
evidence in these volumes, 241, or more than 46 per cent., are males ; 286, or less than 54
per cent., are females ; and 28, or between 5 and 6 per cent., are ministers of religion.
The slight preponderance of female informants may probably be due to their having,
as a rule, more leisure than men for writing on matters unconnected with business.

2 Explicit denials have been given by 73 out of the 10!). From 22 others no answer
has been obtained on the point, either through our own failure at first to realise its
importance, or owing to death or some unavoidable cause ; but of these 22, the majority
have pretty clearly implied that what they describe was a unique experience. Of the
14 who can recall some further instance or instances, 4 have had a single apparently
subjective hallucination under exceptional conditions of bad health or mental strain ;
3 have had one such experience when in a normal state ; and 7 have_ had several such
experiences — some of which, however, differed from the telepathic cases in not representing
a living figure, while others were themselves either probably or possibly of telepathic
origin. I may add that in a large number of other cases, not given in the actual words of
the percipient, there is very good reason to believe the experiences to have been unique.

VOL. II. B 2

4 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

must be made to them separately, not together ; we must not, like Lord
Brougham, argue to one class from the data of the other. I have already
applied the doctrine to a particular class of dreams, with results
which, though numerically striking, left room for doubt, owing to the
peculiar untrustworthiness of memory in dream-matters. It remains
to apply it to the waking phantasms; and here I think that the
results may fairly be held to be decisive.

§ 2. It is clear that the points to be settled are two : — the
frequency of the phantasms which have markedly corresponded
with real events ; and the frequency of phantasms which have had
no such correspondence, and have been obviously and wholly
subjective in character. These points are absolutely essential to
any conclusion on the question before us ; and if not settled in any
other way, they must be settled by guesses or tacit assumptions.
The theory of chance-coincidence, as opposed to that of telepathy,
has so far depended on two such assumptions. The first is that the
coincidences themselves are extremely rare. They can then be
accounted for as accidental. For we know that there are such things
as hallucinations representing human forms, which do not correspond
with any objective fact whatever outside the organism of the per-
cipient ; and it would be rash to deny that the death of the person
represented may now and then, in the world's history, have fallen
on the same day as the hallucination. The second assumption is
that these purely subjective apparitions of forms are extremely
common. It can then be argued that even a considerable number
of them might fall on the same day as the death of the corresponding
human being. Supposing that we could each of us recall the occa-
sional experience of gazing at friends or relatives in places which were
really empty, then — since people are perpetually dying who are the
friends and relatives of some of us — every year might yield a
certain crop of the coincidences.

But as soon as we make these assumptions explicit and look at
them, we see how baseless and arbitrary they are. Why should
either of them be admitted without challenge ? The second one
especially seems opposed to what we may call the common-sense
view of ordinary intelligent men. The question whether or not a
very large proportion of the population have had experience of
morbid or purely subjective hallucinations is one, I submit, where
the opponents of the chance-theory might fairly take their stand

XIIL] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 5

on the ordinary observation of educated persons, and have thrown
on others the onus of proving them wrong. On this point a broad
view, based on one's general knowledge of oneself and one's fellows,
does exist ; and according to it, " spectral illusions " — distinct
hallucinations of the sense of vision — are very far from the everyday
occurrences which they would have to be if we are to suppose that,
whenever they coincide in time with the death of the person seen,
they do so by accident. Nay, if we take even one of our critics, and
bring him fairly face to face with the question, " If you all at once
saw in your room a brother whom you had believed to be a hundred
miles away ; if he disappeared without the door opening ; and if
an hour later you received a telegram announcing his sudden death
— how should you explain the occurrence " ? he does not as a rule
reply, " His day and hour for dying happened also to be my day and
hour for a spectral illusion, which is natural enough, considering
how common the latter experience is." The line that he takes is,
" The supposition is absurd ; there are no really authentic cases of
that sort." Under the immediate pressure of the supposed facts, he
instinctively feels that the argument of chance-coincidence would
not seem effective.

Still, " common-sense" — though it would support what I say —
is not here the true court of appeal. And, moreover, it is not unani-
mous. On the second point, as on the first, I have received the most
divergent replies from persons whom I have casually asked to give a
guess on the subject ; and some have guessed the frequency of the
purely subjective hallucinations as very much below what it actually
is. The moral — that we cannot advance a step without statistics —
seems pretty obvious, though the student of the subject may read
every word that has ever been published on both sides of the
argument without encountering a hint of the need. There is plenty
of assertion, but no figures ; and a single instance, one way or the
other, seems often to be thought decisive. To A, who has himself
seen a friend's form at the time of his death at a distance, the
connection between the two facts seems obvious ; B, having heard of a
phantasm of a living person which raised apprehensions as to his
safety, but which " came to nothing," is at once sure that A's case •
was " a chance." I have even seen this view expanded, and a lead-
ing review gravely urging that the coincidences must be regarded
as accidental, if against every hallucination which has markedly
corresponded with a real event we can set another which has not.

6 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

This is certainly a statistical argument — of a sort — and might be
represented as follows: — At the end of an hour's rifle-practice at
a long-distance range, the record shows that for every shot that
has hit the bull's-eye another has missed the target : therefore the
shots that hit the bull's-eye did so by accident.

§ 3. Perhaps the neglect of statistics has in part been due to ail
apparent hopelessness of attaining a sufficient quantity of reliable facts
on which to found an argument — to an idea that any census on which
a conclusion could be founded would have to be carried out on a
scale so vast as to be practically impossible. " Do you intend," I have
been sometimes asked, "to ask every man and woman in England
whether he or she has experienced any subjective hallucination
during, say, the last twenty years, and also to get a complete record
of all the alleged coincidences within the same period, and then to
compare the two lists ? " Happily nothing at all approaching this is
required. We shall find that approximately accurate figures are
necessary only on one point — the frequency of the subjective halluci-
nations; and this can be ascertained by making inquiries of any
fraction of the population which is large and varied enough to serve
as a fair sample of the whole. Even this smaller task, however, is a
very tedious one, consisting, as it does for the most part, in carefully
registering negative information. The believer in telepathy may feel
that he is doing much more to advance his belief by narrating a
striking positive instance at a dinner party than by ascertaining, for
instance, from twenty of his acquaintance the dull fact that they have
never experienced a distinct visual hallucination. Just in the same
way a scientific lecturer may win more regard at the moment by a
sensational experiment with pretty colours and loud explosions than
by laborious quantitative work in his laboratory. But it must be
persistently impressed on the friends of " psychical research " that the
laborious quantitative work has to be done ; and it is some satisfaction
to think that the facts themselves may stand as material for others to
deal with, even if the conclusions here drawn from them are incorrect.

Nor has the dulness of the work been by any means the only diffi-
culty : its purpose has been widely misconceived, and its scope has
thereby been much curtailed. The proposal for a numerical estimate
was introduced in a circular letter, every word of which might have
been penned by a zealous sceptic, anxious above all things to prove
that, in cases where the phantasm of a distant person has appeared

xiii.] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 7

simultaneously with the person's death, the coincidence has been an
accidental one. Not a syllable was used implying that the authors of
the letter had themselves any opinion as to whether phantasms to
which no real event corresponds are or are not common things ; it
was simply pointed out that it is necessary to have some idea how
common they are, before deciding whether phantasms to which real
events do correspond are or are not to be fairly accounted for by
chance. And since sensory hallucinations, whatever their frequency,
are at any rate phenomena as completely admitted as measles or
colour-blindness, it did not occur to us that the following question
could possibly be misunderstood : —

Since January 1, 1874, have you — when in good health,
free from anxiety, and completely awake — had a vivid impression
of seeing or being touched by a human being, or of hearing a
voice or sound which suggested a human presence, when no one
was there ? Yes or no ?l

Clearly, the more yeses are received to this question — i.e., the
commoner the purely subjective hallucinations prove to be — the
stronger is the argument for chance as an adequate explanation of the
instances of coincidence; the more noes— the rarer the purely
subjective hallucinations prove to be— the stronger the argument
that the death or other crisis which coincides with the apparition
is in some way the cause of the apparition. We should have
expected, if any injustice was to be done us, that it would have
taken the form of attributing to us an inordinate desire for noes.
To our amazement we found that we were supposed to be aiming
exclusively at yeses — and not only at yeses, but at yeses expanded
into orthodox "ghost-stories" — to be anxious, in fact, that every one in
and out of Bedlam who had ever imagined something that was not
there, or mistaken one object for another, should tell us his ex-
perience, with a view that we might immediately interpret it as
due to the intervention of a bogey. A more singular instance of
the power of expectancy — of the power of gathering from words any

1 This comprehensive question has been actually asked in several parts. As first
put, for example, it contained no limitation as to date-yas I was anxious to obtain
accounts of as many hallucinations of the sane as possible ; and the fact that any
experience recorded had or had not fallen within the specified period of 12 years was
ascertained by subsequent correspondence. The details of the experience were also a-
matter of subsequent inquiry.

I need hardly warn the reader not to confound the group of hallucinations belong
ing to the limited number of persons who were expressly asked the above question, with
the large collection of similar experiences which has been frequently mentioned in some
of the preceding chapters. That large collection includes the smaller group, and also
census-cases which fell outside the 12 years' limit ; but it includes also a far larger
number of cases which were received quite irrespectively of the census.

8 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

meaning that a critic comes predisposed to find there — can hardly
be conceived. A statistical question on a perfectly well-recognised
point in the natural history of the senses was treated, in scientific
and unscientific quarters alike, as a manifesto of faith in " super-
natural " agencies ; and we found ourselves solemnly rebuked for ignor-
ing the morbid and subjective character of many hallucinations — that
is to say, for ignoring the fact which we had set forth as the very basis
of our appeal, and from which its whole and sole point was derived.
§ 4. If I have dwelt thus on difficulties and misconceptions, it is
not that I may boast of having altogether triumphed over them. On
the contrary, they have made it impossible to attain more than a
fraction of what I once hoped. I began with the idea that the
census might be extended to 50,000 persons ; the group actually
included numbers only 5705. Still, though this is certainly not a
showy number, any one who is familiar with work in averages
will, I think, admit that it is adequate for the purpose ; and the
friends who have assisted in the collection of the answers (to whom
I take this opportunity of offering my grateful thanks) need
certainly not feel that their labour has been in vain. It is possible
for a small group to be quite fairly representative. Thus, if 50
males were taken at random from the inhabitants of London, if the
heights of their respective owners were measured, and added together,
and if the total were divided by 50, the result might be taken as
representing, within extremely small limits of error, the average
height of adult male Londoners; we should not get a much
more correct result by taking the mean of 500, or 500,000 heights.
This is the simplest sort of case. When it is a question of what
proportion of the population have had a certain experience which
many of them have not had, we must take a larger specimen-
number, adjusting it to some extent by our rough previous know-
ledge. For instance, if we want to know what proportion of the
inhabitants of London have had typhoid fever, it would not be safe
to take 50 of them at random, and then, if we found that 10 of
these had had the illness, to argue that one-fifth of the inhabitants
of London had had it. Our rough knowledge is that a great many
have not had it, and that a good many have ; and in such circum-
stances we should probably get a very appreciably more certain
result by enlarging our representative group to 500.1 If, again, the

1 In the recently issued Supplement to the Registrar-General's Reports for 1870-80.
he bases his conclusions as to the proportionate deadliness of different diseases in the
various occupations on batches of 500-1000 deaths.

XIIL] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 9

experience was of extraordinary rarity, such as leprosy, the number
of our specimen-group would have to be again increased ; even if we
took as many as 500,000 people at random, that is about one-ninth of
the population, and ascertained that one of them was a leper, it
would not be safe to conclude that there were nine lepers in London.
Now our rough knowledge as to hallucinations would place them in
this regard very much more on a par with typhoid fever than with
leprosy. We realise that a great many people have not had experience
of them ; but we realise also that they are in no way marvellous or
prodigious events. And if a group of 5705 persons seems a some-
what arbitrary number by which to test their frequency, the view that
it is too small and that 50,000 would be greatly preferable, is one
that can at any rate hardly be held with consistency by advocates of
the theory of chance-coincidence. For the main prop of that theory,
as we have seen, is the assumption that purely subjective hallucina-
tions are tolerably cdmmon experiences ; whereas it is only of
decidedly rare experiences that the frequency, in relation to the
whole population, would be much more correctly estimated from the
proportion of fifty thousand people that have had them than from
the proportion of five thousand people that have had them. How-
ever, the adequacy of the latter number approves itself most clearly
in the course of the census itself. We find as we go on that
hallucinations are sufficiently uncommon to force us to take our
specimen-group of persons in thousands, not in hundreds, but
not so uncommon as to force us to take very many thousands :
after the first thousand is reached the proportion of " yeses " to
"noes" keeps pretty uniformly steady — as would, no doubt, be
the case if the question asked related not to hallucinations but to
typhoid fever.

As regards the sort of persons from whom the answers have
been collected — if there have been any answers from persons whose
deficiencies of education or intelligence rendered them unfit subjects
for a simple inquiry bearing on their personal experience, they form,
I may confidently say, an inappreciable fraction of the whole.
Perhaps a fourth of the persons canvassed have been in the position
of shopkeepers and artisans or employes of various sorts ; but the_
large majority have belonged to what would be known as the
educated class, being relatives and friends of the various collectors. It
is, no doubt, safest to assume that a certain degree of education is a
pre-requisite to even the simplest form of participation in scientific

10 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

work ; and this condition, it will be observed, in no way detracts from
the representative character of the group. A few thousand educated
persons, taken at random, present an abundantly sufficient variety of
types ; and, indeed, for the purpose in view, the group is the more
truly representative for belonging mainly to the educated class,
inasmuch as it is from that class that the majority of the cases
which are presented in this work as probably telepathic are also drawn.

§ 5. To say, however, that the answers came in the main from an
educated class, is not, of course, a guarantee of the accuracy of the
census ; and before giving the actual results it may be well to
forestall some possible objections.

It may be said, to begin with, that people may have had the
experience inquired about, but may have forgotten the fact. This
is the objection which was considered above in respect of dreams of
death, and which there seemed to have decided force. In respect of
waking hallucinations of the senses, its force is very much less. No
doubt hallucinations may exhibit all degrees of vagueness ; and it is
very possible that extremely slight and momentary specimens may
make little impression, and may rapidly be forgotten ; but for the
purposes of the census it would not in the least matter that persons
whose experience had been of this slight and momentary kind should
answer no instead of yes. It would have been unwise to complicate the
question asked by an attempt to define the extent of vividness that the
hallucination must have reached, to be reckoned as an item in our
census; but clearly the only subjective hallucinations of which it
really concerns us to ascertain the frequency are those which are
in themselves as distinct and impressive as the hallucinations that
we represent as telepathic; and any that fall below this point of
distinctness and impressiveness have no bearing on the argument.
And, per contra, it will be seen that by not limiting the wording of
the question to distinct and impressive hallucinations, the collector
exposes himself to receiving the answer " yes " from persons whose
hallucination actually was very vague and momentary, but who do,
as it happens, remember its occurrence. In point of fact, this has
occurred a good many times ; and the swelling of the list of yeses by
this means probably outweighs any losses of what should have been
genuine yeses through failure of memory. For consider what such
failure of memory would imply. A fact of sight, hearing, or touch,
as clear and unequivocal as most of the sensory impressions which
we adduce as evidence for telepathy, must be very clear and

xni.] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 11

unequivocal indeed. And the absence of the normal external cause
of such an impression, when recognised, can hardly fail to give
rise to genuine surprise — the surprise that follows a novel and
unaccountable experience : this has been the result of almost all
the " telepathic " phantasms, quite independently of the news which
afterwards seemed to connect them with reality. Now, can it be a
common thing for an experience as unusual and surprising as this to
be, within a dozen years or any shorter period, so utterly obliterated
from a person's mind that his memory remains a blank, even when
he is pointedly asked to try and recall whether he has had such an
experience or not ?

A second objection is this. It has been suggested that untrue
answers may be given by persons wishing to amuse themselves at
our expense. Now I cannot deny that persons may exist who would
be glad to thwart us, and amuse themselves, even at the cost of
untruth. But when the question is put, " Do you remember having
ever distinctly seen the face or form of a person known to you, when
that person was not really there ? " it is not at once obvious whether
the amusing untruth would be " Yes " or " No." In neither case
would the joke seem to be of a very exhilarating quality ; but, on the
whole, I should say that " Yes " would be the favourite, as at any
rate representing the rarer and less commonplace experience. " Yes "
is, moreover, the answer which (as I have explained) it has been very
generally thought that we ourselves preferred; so that to give it
might produce a piquant sense of fooling us to the top of our bent.
But the reader has seen that, so far as the census might be thus
affected, it would be affected in a direction adverse to the telepathic
argument ; for the commoner the purely casual hallucinations are
reckoned to be, the stronger is the argument that the visions which
correspond with real events do so by chance. And if the number of
these coincident visions makes the chance-argument untenable, even
when the basis of estimation is affected in the way supposed, a
fortiori would this be the case if the yeses were reduced to their true
number.

Yet another objection is that persons who have had hallucinations
may sometimes be disinclined to admit the fact, and may say " No "
instead of "Yes" in self-defence. This source of error must be
frankly admitted ; but I feel tolerably confident that it has not
affected the results to a really detrimental extent. Any reluctance
to give the true answer is, as a rule, observable at the moment ; and

12 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

in most cases it disappears when the purpose of the census is
explained, and careful suppression of names is guaranteed. And
against this tendency to swell the noes may be set several reasons
why, quite apart from untruth, a census like this is sure to produce
an unfair number of yeses. Quite apart from any wish to deceive, the
very general impression that yeses were what was specially wanted
could not but affect some of the answers given, at any rate to the
extent of causing indistinct impressions to be represented as vivid
sensory experiences ;l and it has also led some of those who have
aided in the collection to put the questions to persons of whom it was
known beforehand that their answer would be yes. Moreover,
when question-forms to be filled up are distributed on a large
scale, it is impossible to bring it home to the minds of many
of the persons whose answer would be " No " that there is any
use in recording that answer. They probably have a vague idea
that they have heard " negative evidence " disparaged, and fail
to see that every percentage in the world involves it — that we
cannot know that one man in 100 is six feet high without
evidence that 99 men in 100 are not six feet high. This difficulty
has been encountered again and again ; and on the whole I have no
doubt that the proportion of yeses is decidedly larger than it ought
to be. Fortunately, incorrectness on this side need not trouble us—
its only effect being that the telepathic argument, if it prevail, will
prevail though based on distinctly unfavourable assumptions.

§ 6. And now to proceed to the actual results of the census, and
to the calculations based thereon. I will begin with auditory cases.
Of the 5705 persons who have been asked the question, it appears
that 96 have, within the last 12 years, when awake,2 experienced an
auditory hallucination of a voice. The voice is alleged to have been
unrecognised in 48 cases, and recognised in 44, in 13 of which latter
cases the person whose voice seemed to be heard was known to have
been dead for some time. In the remaining 4 cases it has been

1 For instance, a lady who answers that she has had an auditory hallucination, and is
written to with the view of finding out in what it had consisted, then states that "it
was not an auditory experience, but merely a feeling that something had happened."
Here the answer could be rectified ; but even the many hundreds of letters that have
been written on the subject have not served to eliminate all doubtful cases.

2 I have not made a separate calculation for "borderland " cases; as the attempt to
obtain separate statistics under that head would have complicated the census, and the
only chance of carrying it through successfully was to keep it as simple as possible.
The question as to hallucinations specially included the condition of being awake ; but
naturally some of the experiences recorded had taken place when the hallucinated person
was in bed (Vol. i., p. 393). I reckon these cases among the yeses ; and I include similar
experiences in the group of coincidental hallucinations which appears later in the
calculation.

xiii.] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 13

impossible to discover whether the voice was recognised or not ; the
numbers being so even, I shall perhaps be justified in assigning 2 of
these to one class, and 2 to the other. The computation will be
clearer if we consider only the cases in which the voice was
recognised, and the person whom it suggested was living ; these, then
may be taken as 33, But, out of the 33 persons, 10 l profess to have
had the experience more than once. Such cases of repetition, or at
any rate most of them, might fairly have been disregarded ; for since
the large majority of the persons who have had one of the coinci-
dental hallucinations, which appear later in the calculation, can recall
no other hallucination besides that one, I might in the same propor-
tion confine the present list, which consists wholly of non-coincidental
or purely subjective hallucinations, to similarly unique experiences,
and leave out of account those occurring to people who seem rather
more pre-disposed to such affections. However, in order to make
ample allowance for the' possibility that the witnesses in the coinci-
dental cases may have had subjective hallucinations which they have
forgotten, let us take the repetitions into account ; and let us suppose
each of the 10 persons just mentioned to have had 4 experiences
of the sort within the specified 12 years. The most convenient
way of making this allowance will be to add 30 to the former total
of 33 — i.e., to take the number of persons who have had the
experience under the given conditions as 63. This amounts to 1
in every 90 of the group of 5705 persons named, or (if that group
be accepted as fairly representative of the population of this country)
1 in every 90 of the population.

Let us now see what the proportion of the population who have
had such an experience ought to be, on the hypothesis that the
similar impressions of recognised voices presented in this book as
telepathic were really chance-coincidences. As before in the case
of dreams (Vol. I., pp. 303-7), I take cases where the coincidence of
the hallucination was with death — the reasons for this selection being

(1) that death is the prominent event in our telepathic cases ; and

(2) that for the purpose of an accurate numerical estimate it is
important to select an event of a very definite and unmistakeable
kind, such as only happens once to each individual. Again also, in
accordance with the official returns which give ^^ as the annual
death-rate, the proportion of anyone's relatives and acquaintances

1 Some of these cases were ciuite clearly " after-images " (see Vol. i., p. 502). One
informant describes the impressions as very faint, and another experienced them only
when over-tired.

14 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

who die in the course of 12 years is taken as f^ ; and as we
have seen (Vol. I., pp. 305-6), it will make no appreciable difference
to the calculation whether a person's circle of relatives and acquaint-
ances, the voice of any one of whom his hallucination may represent,
is large or small. The probability, then, that a person hallucinated
in the way supposed will, by accident, have his hallucination within
12 hours on either side of the death of the relative or acquaintance
whose voice it represents, is 1 in 12 x 3|654X 100°, or 101591. That is
to say, each coincidental hallucination of the sort in question implies
16,590 purely subjective cases of the same type. Now our collection
may be reckoned to include 13 first-hand and well-attested coinci-
dental cases of this kind, which have occurred in this country within
the specified time.1 On the hypothesis, therefore, that these cases
were accidental, the circle of persons from whom they are drawn ought
to supply altogether, in the specified 12 years, 215,670 examples.

The next point to decide is the size of the circle from which our
coincidental cases are drawn. The number here is not one that it is
possible to estimate accurately : what must be done, therefore, is to
make sure that our margin is on the side adverse to the telepathic
argument, i.e., to take a number clearly in excess of the true one.
Our chief means of obtaining information has been by occasional
requests in newspapers. A million-and-a-half would probably be
an outside estimate of the circulation of the papers which have
contained our appeals ; but it by no means follows that every para-
graph in a paper is studied by every person, or by a tenth of the
persons, whom the paper reaches. However, I will make the
extreme assumption that as many as a quarter of a million of people
have by this means become aware of the kind of evidence that
was being sought — an assumption which probably arrogates to us
who sought it many times as much fame as we really possess ; and
I will allow another 50,000 for those who have become aware of
the object of our work through private channels. This would raise
the number of the circle from whom our evidence is drawn to
300,000, or about sV of the adult population.2 No one, I think,

1 Nos. 33, 158, 184, 190, 197, 272, 273, 278, 298, 300, 310, 340, 702. In one of these cases,
No. 197, it is possible, on the facts stated, that the 12 hours' limit was slightly exceeded.
I have not included case 613, as, though there were only a very few people by whom the
percipient could have been addressed as "Pa," — which was the word he heard — and
one of these died at the time at a distance, the father did not identify the voice with the
particular son who died.

2 In the "adult population"! mean to include all persons above 15 years of age.
In the Supplement to the 45th Annual Report of the Registrar-General, p. xix., the
proportion of such persons is given as '64 of the whole ; which would make their number
about 24,000,000.

XIIL] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 15

will maintain on reflection, that I am taking too low an estimate.
Would anyone, for instance, suppose that if he canvassed the first
1000 adults whom he met in the streets of any large town, he would
find that 12 or 13 of them had, within the last three years, been aware
of what we wanted, and of the address to which information might be
sent ? and for rural districts such a supposition would be even more
violent. But I am further supposing that this area of 300,000 persons
has been drained dry — again an extravagant concession ; for though
it is easily assumed that anyone who has ever had a " psychical " ex-
perience is desirous to publish it abroad, as a matter of fact people do
not usually take the trouble to write a letter about family and personal
matters to perfect strangers, on the ground of a newspaper appeal ;
and I have already mentioned that we ourselves know of much
evidence which the reluctance or indiiference of the parties concerned
has made unavailable for our collection ; we cannot, therefore, doubt
that much more remains unelicited even among those whom our
appeal has reached. A further strong argument for the existence
of these unelicited facts is the very large proportion of our actual
cases that has been drawn from a circle of our own, unconnected
with "psychical" inquiry — from the friends, or the friends' friends,
of a group of some half-dozen persons who have had no such ex-
periences themselves, and who have no reason to suppose their friends
or their friends' friends better supplied with them than anybody else's.1
Here, then, is the conclusion to which we shall be driven, if our
coincidental cases were really purely subjective hallucinations, and
the coincidence was an accident : — that in a circle of 300,000, within
12 years, 215,670 subjective hallucinations of the type in question
have taken place ; that is that, on an average, 7 persons in every 10
have had such an experience within the time. But the result of the
census above described showed the proportion to be 1 person in every
90 only. Thus the theory of chance-coincidence, as applied to this

1 An approximation to an estimate of the actual circle whom we have effectively
reached may perhaps be made as follows : — Of the 24 coincidental dreams of death,
mentioned in Vol. i., p. 307, 4 were derived from a canvassed group of 53(50 persons ;
of the 13 coincidental auditory hallucinations mentioned above, none were derived from
the canvassed group of 5705 persons ; and of 27 coincidental visual hallucinations
(of a definite type to be explained immediately), 1 was derived from a canvassed
group of 5705 persons. Thus of 64 coincidental experiences of specified sorts, 5, or about
one-thirteenth, were obtained by canvassing a body which (to take a mean) we may call
5535 : we may surmise, then, that the circle from whom the whole number were drawn
amounts to about 13 times 5535, or 71,955. This is no doubt a very rough calculation ;
the number of coincidental (or, as we should say, telepathic) experiences yielded by a
random group of 5535 persons being too small for us to be confident that it represents
the average proportion in other groups of the same size. But the estimate is probably not
so inexact but that it may safely be taken as showing the assumption of 300,000, made in
the text, to be extravagantly unfair to the telepathic argument.

16 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

class of cases, would require that the proportion of those who have not
had, to those who have had, a subjective hallucination of a recognised
voice should be 63 times as large as it has been shown to
be ; that is, would require either that the subjective hallucinations
should be 63 times as numerous as they actually are, or else
that the circle from whom our coincidental cases are drawn should
amount to 63 times the assumed size — in other words, that our
existence and objects should have been prominently before the
minds of more than three-fourths of the adult population of the country !
Another form of the estimate is as follows. The probability that
a person, taken at random, will, in the course of 12 years, have the
form of hallucination in question is ^j; the probability that any
assigned member of the general population, and therefore any
particular person whose phantasmal voice is heard, will die within
12 hours of an assigned point of time is \%m x vws', hence the
probability that, in the course of 12 years, a hallucination of this
form and the death of the person whose voice seems to be heard
will fall within 12 hours of one another is ^j x iMu x ~5%5, or almost
exactly 1 in 1,500,000. And the circle from which our coincidental
cases are drawn is assumed to be 300,000. From these data it may
be calculated that the odds against the occurrence, by accident, of as
many coincidences of the type in question as that circle produced, are
more than a trillion to 1.

§ 7. But the reductio ad absurdum becomes far more striking
when we apply the doctrine of chances to visual cases. Out of the
5705 persons taken at random, of whom the above question was asked,
only 21 could recall having, in the conditions named and within the
specified 12 years, experienced a visual hallucination representing a
living person known to them. But two of the 21 had had 2
experiences of the sort ; so let us take the total as 23.1 That is, the
experience has fallen to the lot of one 248th of the group of
persons asked, or, if that group be fairly representative, to 1 person in
every 248 of the population.2 Now, just as before, each coincidental

1 This is a liberal allowance ; for it includes several cases where there was such an
amount of anxiety or expectancy on the part of the hallucinated person as would prevent
us, if it were present in a coincidental case, from including such a case in our telepathic
evidence. In 7 of the cases, the form seen was an "after-image " of what had been, for
some time previously, part of the perceiver's daily visual experience.

2 It will be seen that 1 in 248, though a small proportion, is yet quite large enough to
make it likely that most of us should casually have heard of a case or two of the kind.
For there are probably more than 248 persons whom we are each of us sufficiently near to
make it natural that an unusual experience — such as a distinct "spectral illusion^" —
befalling one of them, should directly or indirectly reach our ears. This is worth noting,
because one sometimes hears the statement, " Why / heard the other day of a person

XIIL] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 17

hallucination of the sort in question, supposing it to have been
purely subjective and the coincidence to have been accidental, should
stand for 16,590 purely subjective hallucinations. But our collection
includes 31 first-hand1 and well-attested coincidental cases of this
type, which have occurred in this country within the specified time ;z
and the circle of persons from whom they were drawn — liberally
supposed, as before, to number 300,000 — ought, therefore, to supply
altogether, in the specified 12 years, 514,290 examples. That is to
say, it ought to have happened on an average to everybody once,
and to most people twice, within the given time, distinctly to see an
absent relation or acquaintance in a part of space that was actually
vacant. But the census has shown that, within the given time, only
about 1 in every 248 persons has had such an experience even once.
Thus the group of visual coincidental cases now in question, if ascribed
to accident, would require either that the subjective hallucinations
should be more than 396 times as numerous as they actually are ;
or else that the circle from whom our coincidental cases are drawn
should amount to more than 396 times the assumed size — in other
words, that our existence and objects should have been prominently
before the minds of every adult member of a population 5 times as
large as the existing one.

The second form of estimate in the last section, applied to visual
cases, will give as the probability that the hallucination and the
death will fall within 12 hours of one another, 2*-8 x ^_ x _L_^ or
1 in 4,114,545. And the circle from which our coincidental cases
are drawn is assumed to be 300,000. From these data it may be
calculated that the odds against the occurrence, by accident, of as many
coincidences of the type in question as the 31 which that circle pro-
duced, are about a thousand billion trillion trillion trillions to 1.
Or, to put it in yet another way — the theory of chances, which gives 1
as the most probable number of coincidences of the type in question
for every 4,114,545 of the population to yield, will give 6 as the most

who had been disturbed by seeing an apparition of a friend, and nothing came of it,"
made as though it amounted to a proof that such experiences were common enough to
afford scope for any number of marked coincidences.

1 In 3 of the cases the evidence is not first-hand from the percipient, but is of the
nature described in Vol. i., p. 148.

2 Nos. 26, 27, 28, 29, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 182, 184, 195, 197, 199, 201, 202, 214, 231, -
236, 237, 238, 240, 249, 298, 300, 350, 355, 695, 697, 702, and the case described in Vol. i.,p.
130, note. As regards recognition, Nos. 170 and 355 do not stand on quite the same ground
as the other cases. I am not reckoning case 241, where the recognition, such as it was,
was retrospective ; nor case 500, where it seems at any rate as likely^ as not that the 12
hours' limit was somewhat exceeded. In 3 cases, Nos. 197, 201, 231, it is possible, on the
facts stated, that the limit was exceeded ; but in the two latter cases this is very impro-
bable, and the coincidence may have been exact.

VOL. II. C

18 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

probable number for the whole adult population to yield, within
the given period. Yet we draw more than 5 times that number from
a fraction of the adult population which can only by an extravagantly
liberal estimate be assumed to amount to an 80th part of the whole,
and which has been very inadequately canvassed.

§ 8. In the above estimates, I have allowed to the so-called
coincidence the rather wide limit of 12 hours. But in most of the
actual cases it has been much closer than this ; and it will be worth
while to show how a single case of very close coincidence may
legitimately strengthen the argument. First, it must be unre-
servedly admitted that a single case, if it stood alone and no similar
one had ever been heard of, would have no cogency whatever as
evidence of the operation of anything beyond chance. The most
extraordinary coincidence, as above remarked, may yet be totally
insignificant. The a priori improbability that the tallest man of the
century will be born during a transit of Venus is enormous ; but such
a conjunction of events, if it happened, might be at once and with
moral certainty ascribed to accident ; and with equal certainty might
it be predicted that such a conjunction would never recur. And
without resorting to imaginary examples, we often encounter
conjunctions and coincidences which would have appeared, before
they happened, to be extremely improbable, but the happening of
which is none the less clearly accidental. The odds are very great
against two of the foremost men in a century being born on the same
day ; yet this happened in the case of Darwin and Lincoln, and no
one imagines that one birth depended on the other. " Extraordinary
coincidences " are, in fact, quite ordinary things ; and only when
previous experience has given us ground for suspecting (however
faintly) that the conjunction in time or special combination is due to
some positive causal link, can we connect the a priori improbability
of a new case with an a posteriori argument that cases of that
type are not due to chance.1 Now the result of § 7 may be

1 In a general way, coincidences where previous experience affords some ground for
suspecting (however faintly) a cause other than chance are distinguished from coin-
cidences where no such ground exists by this fact — that the latter sort of cases, if
d priori highly improbable, are not mentioned or described until after they have happened.
From the mere fact that they do not belong to any known or surmised type, they do not
enter into anyone's head : no one suggests, without any sort of grounds, that a particular
thing will happen to some one at a particular time, or predicts any particular highly
improbable coincidence, and then afterwards finds this thing or this coinci-
dence actually occurring. Now it will scarcely be contended that the co-
incidence of an apparition with the death of the person seen is a combination of events
which has never entered anyone's head ; for it has entered the heads even of those who
deny that it has ever occurred, or who ascribe its occurrence to accident. But the idea
has of course had much more than this negative sort of existence ; there has been a

xiii.] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 19

summarised as follows. The census leads us to infer that, during
the years 1874-85, out of 300,000 inhabitants of this country
taken at random, w X5™'m or 1209 have had a recognised visual
hallucination, representing a living person, which did not coin-
cide with the death of that person. And during the same period,
out of the same number of persons (supposing our inquiries really
to have extended to so wide a circle,) at least 31 have had a
recognised visual hallucination which did coincide — in the sense of
falling withing 12 hours of — the death of the person seen. That is, out
of 1209 + 31 or 1240 hallucinations, 31, or 1 in 40, have fallen within
12 hours of the death of the person seen. Now let us apply this
conclusion to case 28 (Vol. I., p. 210). When Mr. S. had his visual
hallucination representing his friend, he would have been justified in
regarding the probability that his friend would prove to have died
within 12 hours of the vision as 1 in 40 ; whereas, if there was no
ground at all for surmising that a causal connection may exist be-
tween deaths and apparitions, he would only have been justified in
regarding the probability of his friend's dying on that day as about
1 in 20,440 — estimated from the death-rate which tables of mortality
give for men of his friend's age (48 years). But it will be observed
that the death and the apparition, for aught we know, were abso-
lutely simultaneous, and at any rate were within a quarter of an hour
of one another. Since, however, the death may have occurred 12
minutes before or 12 minutes after the apparition, we must
take into account the double period ; or, to allow for difference
of clocks, let us say half-an-hour. Now, on the supposition
that telepathy is a reality in the world, closeness of coincidence
rather increases than otherwise the probability that the death
and the apparition in any particular case are causally connected ;
whereas the probability of a death accidentally falling in a particular
half-hour is, of course, 48 times less than that of its falling on a
particular day. Thus the a priori probability that the death, if uncon-
nected with the apparition, would fall in the particular half-hour in
which the apparition fell, was 1 in 981,120 ; and in considering the
question of connection, it is this extremely small degree of probability
which has to be contrasted with the 1 in 40 which we have taken as .

good deal of positive belief that such combinations occur, and that their occurrence implies
a causal connection between the death and the apparition. And though this belief may
have been rash and premature before the necessary statistics had been obtained, I have
tried in the last two sections to show that it may now be justified by precise calculation.

VOL. II. C 2

-20 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

about the true d priori probability that this particular half-hour
would prove to be that of the death.

But the significance of extreme closeness of coincidence may be
yet more strikingly suggested, if we consider the probability of the
joint event before either part of it has occurred. My census gives ais
as the probability that a particular individual would within 12 years
have a visual hallucination of a friend not known to be dead. Mr. S.
has, say, x friends, of whom about a fourth would naturally die in
this period ; and the period comprises 210,240 half-hours. Thus the
probability of Mr. S.'s hitting off by chance such a coincidence as he
did hit off was sla X i X f X 210>1240, or about 1 in 208 millions.1
It might, I think, be safely said that, in the world's history, no one
has ever contemplated the possible participation of himself, or of any
other specified person, in an event of this degree of unlikelihood, and
has afterwards found his idea realised. But apart from this, the points
to be specially weighed are (1) that Mr. S.'s case was drawn from a very
inconsiderable fraction of the population — a fraction liberally estimated
at 8*0 ; and (2) that this fraction of the population has supplied many
other parallel instances of great closeness of coincidence. Taking only
the "borderland" and waking phantasms recorded on first-hand testi-
mony in the main body of this work, I find that 66 of them are repre-
sented as having occurred within an hour of the event on the agent's
side — which event in 41 of the 66 cases was death; 15 more, according
to the facts stated, were within two hours of the event, which in 10 of
the 15 cases was death ; and in nearly all these cases, as well as in
several others, it is quite possible that the coincidence was absolutely
exact. I do not forget, what I have expressly pointed out in Chapter
IV., that exaggeration of the closeness of the coincidence is a likely
form for exaggeration in such matters to take ;2 but in a considerable

1 The denominator of the third of the four fractions which are multiplied together
will diminish or increase according as the period considered is longer or shorter than 12
years. Otherwise the length of the period is not material ; since the first fraction may
be assumed to vary inversely with the last.

The death, it will be observed, might happen in any half -hour ; and therefore the
total of half-hours must be reckoned, without deduction of those in which a waking
hallucination would be impossible — as in sleep ; or of those in which it would be specially
improbable— ^as during conversation or active exercise. The case is like that of drawing
two tickets simultaneously from two bags, one of which contains the numbers from 1 to
100, and the other the numbers from 1 to 1000. The probability that the two tickets
drawn will bear the same number is not y^ but WUT- I neglect the remote chance that
several friends might die in one half -hour — which, however, can be shown not to affect
the result.

- Thus it would be quite unjustifiable to add to the list a number of cases in the
Supplement where the coincidence is stated to have been exact. Still the Supplement
contains several accounts — e.g., Nos. 508, 510, 569, 584, 599 — which may fairly be assumed
to be correct in this particular.

xiii.] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 21

number of the cases mentioned, good reason is shown for believing
it to have been as close as is stated.

But the huge total of improbability is nothing like complete.
Nothing has been said of the aggregate strength of the cases where
the phantasm was unrecognised. Nothing has been said of the large
array of cases where the coincident event was not death, but some
other form of crisis — a class which does not lend itself easily to a
precise numerical estimate, but whose collective force, even if it stood
alone, would be very great. Once more, each of the two classes of
cases — the " reciprocal " and the " collective " — which still await dis-
cussion, includes specimens of visual and auditory phantasms ; and
some of these afford an immensely higher probability for a cause other
than chance, than the more ordinary cases where only one person is
impressed. For the improbability of one sort of coincidence, that
between B's unusual hallucination and A's condition — has now to be
multiplied by the improbability of another sort of coincidence, that
between B's hallucination and a second unusual impression (whether a
hallucination or of some other form) on the part of A or C. Nor
even so will the argument for telepathic phantasms be nearly
exhausted. For it will have been observed that throughout I have
been taking into account nothing beyond the bare facts of the death
and the hallucination, and altogether neglecting the correspondences
of detail which in some cases add indefinitely, and almost infinitely,
to the improbability of the chance occurrence.

It would be very easy to amplify this reasoning, and to extend and
vary the computations themselves ; but the specimens given are
perhaps sufficient. They cannot possibly be made interesting ; but
they are indispensable if the question is ever to be set at rest, and the
appeal to the doctrine of chances to be anything better than empty
words. Figures, one is sometimes told, can be made to prove
anything ; but I confess that I should be curious to see the figures
by which the theory of chance-coincidence could here be proved ade-
quate to the facts. Whatever group of phenomena be selected, and
whatever method of reckoning be adopted, the estimates founded on
that theory are hopelessly and even ludicrously overpassed. With so
enormous a margin to draw on, there is no particular temptation to.
exaggerate the extent to which the evidence for the phenomena
is to be relied on. In some cases it is possibly erroneous ; in many
it is undoubtedly incomplete ; narratives may have been admitted
which a more sagacious criticism would have excluded. But after

22 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

all allowances and deductions, the conclusion that our collection
comprises a large number of coincidences which have had some other
cause than chance will still, I believe, be amply justified.1

§ 9. But I have not yet done. There are considerations of a
quite different kind which still further strengthen the argument for
telepathy as against chance. At the close of the last chapter, I
briefly referred to certain points of contrast between the telepathic
and the purely subjective class of hallucinations. I have now to take
up this thread and to show that, though the hallucinations which
may be regarded as telepathic or veridical include many cases which
may differ from purely subjective hallucinations of the sane only in
the fact of being veridical, yet the group, as a whole, presents some
well-marked peculiarities.

The first of these peculiarities is the great preponderance
of visual cases. Among hallucinations of the insane, the proportion
of auditory to visual cases is often given as about 3 to 1 ;
this estimate, however, seems to have been merely copied by
one writer from another since the days of Esquirol ; and I am
not aware that any statistics, on a large scale, have been obtained or
published. Dr. Savage, however, tells me that he thinks that this is
about the usual proportion at Bethlem Hospital ; and Dr. Lockhart
Robertson writes to me, " Esquirol has put the proportion lower than
I should do. I should say 5 to 1 at least ; auditory hallucinations
are very frequent, visual rare." With respect to the transient hallu-
cinations of the sane, so far as the results of my census are accepted,
there is no doubt on the matter. We have seen that, out of 5705
persons taken at random, 46 proved to have had, within the last 12
years, an auditory hallucination of the " recognised " type, of whom 10
had had the experience more than once ; and only 21 a visual one,
of whom 2 had had the experience more than once. It becomes, then,
at once a very remarkable fact that of the hallucinations which, with-
in the same period, have coincided with real events, 31 should be
visual, and only 13 auditory — or 26 and 8, if we omit 5 which affected
both senses ; while the whole collection of numbered cases in this work
includes 271 phantasms which were visual without any auditory element,
and 85 only which were auditory without any visual element. This

1 I have given no separate estimate of the coincidental cases which happened before
Jan. 1, 1874 ; as to do so would have been simply to reproduce the reasonings of §§ 6 and
7 with rather less striking results. Nor have I taken account of the experiences of
foreigners, as these could not be brought into relation to statistics on subjective
hallucinations belonging to this one country. But these further cases have a true
force of their own, in indicating the general diffusion of the phenomena.

XIIL] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 23

difference would alone be a serious objection to explaining the coinci-
dences as accidental. Nor could the advocates of the chance-theory
fairly evade the objection by attributing the inversion of the ordinary
proportion to faults of evidence. For why should evidence be faulty in
this partial and one-sided way ? Why should people's memories deceive
them more as to the fact of having seen something on a particular day
than as to the fact of having heard something ? On the telepathic
theory, on the other hand, the peculiarity seems to admit of explana-
tion. The majority of the auditory cases, in transient hallucinations of
the sane, are of hearing the name called, or of hearing some short
familiar phrase ; and of such cases, as we saw above (Vol. I., pp.
489-90), the most natural physiological explanation is that they are
not produced by a downward stimulation from the higher tracts of
the brain, but are due to a sudden reverberation at the sensory centre
itself, which is readily excited to vibrations of a familiar type. The
telepathic hallucinations; on the other hand, were traced (as far as
their development in the percipient is concerned) to a stimulation
passing downwards to the sensory centres from the higher or
ideational tracts of the brain. There is, then, no difficulty in
supposing that the auditory centre is more prone than the visual
to spontaneous recrudescence of vibrations ; but that the downward
excitation, which hurries ideas and images on into delusive sensory
percepts, finds a readier passage to the visual centre than to the
auditory — or at any rate that, where the idea of a particular
individual is to be abnormally embodied in a sensory form, it is
more natural and direct to visualise it, in a shape that conveys
his permanent personal attributes, than to verbalise it in some
imagined or remembered phrase.

A subordinate point, but one which is still worth noting, is that
the proportion of cases where more senses than one have been con-
cerned is considerably larger in the telepathic than in the purely
subjective class of hallucinations — which seems to imply what may
be called a higher average intensity in the former class. Out of 590
subjective cases, I find that 49, that is, a trifle over 8 per cent, of the
whole number, are alleged to have concerned more senses than one ;
of which 24 were visual and auditory, 8 visual and tactile, 13 auditory
and tactile, and 4 concerned all three senses. Taking the telepathic
evidence, I find that, out of 423 cases where a sensory hallucination
seems to have been distinctly externalised, 80, or 19 per cent, of the
whole number, are alleged to have concerned more senses than one ;

24 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

of which 53 were visual and auditory, 13 visual and tactile, 6 auditory
and tactile, and 8 concerned all three senses. I may add that the
proportion of 19 per cent, remains exactly the same if only the
first-hand cases included in the body of the work be taken into
account, and cannot therefore be attributed to exaggeration of the
facts in those narratives in the Supplement which are given at
second-hand.1

The next distinguishing mark of the class of phantasms which
have coincided with real events is the enormous proportion of them in
which the figure or the voice was recognised. In the purely subjec-
tive class of transient hallucinations of the sane, the recognised and
unrecognised phantasms seem to be about equal in number. Thus,
if we confine ourselves to cases where a human presence was
suggested, of the canvassed group of 5705 persons, 17 had seen
unrecognised figures, to 21 who had seen recognised ones; and 50
had heard unrecognised voices, to 46 who had heard recognised ones.
Of the visible phantasms described in this work as probably tele-
pathic, which represented human forms or faces without any sound
of a voice, 237 have been recognised, and only 13 unrecognised.
Of the phantasms described in this work as probably telepathic, which
consisted simply of voices uttering words, 36 have been of a recog-
nised and 21 of an unrecognised voice ; but among these 211 include 6
cases where the words heard were as closely associated with the agent as
if the tone had been his, since they actually named him ; and a seventh
where a place specially connected with him was named. Out of 38 cases
which included both a form and a voice, the phantasm was unrecognised
in only 2. It may be said that the fact of recognition is the very
fact which has led us to refer the phantasm to the telepathic class,
and that therefore it is no wonder if the recognised phantasms
preponderate in our evidence. But this is not what has happened.
Important as the recognition is, and greatly as the lack of it detracts
from the evidential force of a case, it is the coincidence, not the
recognition, that we have throughout regarded as the main point ;
and cases have never been suppressed for lack of recognition alone,
provided the coincidence was close — non-recognition being easily
explicable on the view of telepathic hallucinations above propounded

1 If only the subjective cases received from the canvassed group of 5705 persons be
considered, those which concerned more than one sense amount to less than 4 per cent. ;
while of the 40 special coincidental cases enumerated in p. 14, first note, and p. 17, second
note, 8, that is 20 percent., concerned more than one sense— or 17| per cent, if we exclude
one case, No. 199, where it is not quite certain that what was heard was not a real sound.

XIIL] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 25

(Vol. I., pp. 539-40). The fact is simply that we have received com-
paratively few cases of unrecognised phantasms of human figures or
voices which have closely coincided, and afterwards been associated,
with some marked event closely affecting the percipient ; and those
which we have received, on trustworthy authority, have been
included in our collection. And if it be further suggested that the
persons concerned are themselves little likely to remark the coinci-
dence, if the phantasmal form or voice was not recognised, my
reply is (1) that this seems a very sweeping assumption ; and (2)
that so far as it is valid as an argument, it implies the existence
of a large number of unnoted cases, over and above those which it
is possible to collect, of those very coincidences whose perpetual
repetition is already such a mountainous obstacle to the theory that
they occur by chance.1

Further knowledge may possibly bring to light other points in
which the hallucinations that have corresponded with real events —
taken in their immediate aspect as phenomena and quite apart from
this correspondence — may be distinguished from the general body
of transient hallucinations of the sane. And while the resemblances,
brought out in the two preceding chapters, between the coincidental
and the non-coincidental or purely subjective experiences, were
sufficient, I think, to show that the coincidental cases are truly
hallucinations of the percipient's senses, clearly every feature which
can be named as distinguishing these hallucinations, — every feature
which tends to separate them off as a restricted group — thereby
increases the difficulty of attributing the correspondences to
chance.

The last point to which I must call attention, as conflicting with

1 It may still be thought that the visual and the recognised phantasms are at any
rate more interesting than the auditory and the unrecognised, and that that is a reason
for their preponderating among the telepathic cases that we have received. I would
admit this to some extent. That some difference in the record is made by the superior
interest of visual and of recognised phantasms, may be argued from the numbers in
my total collection of hallucinations, putting aside those presented as telepathic evidence.
Thus, in spite of the visual hallucinations being shown, by the canvassing of a limited group
of persons, to be the rarer phenomena, I have a total of 311 visual cases to only 187
auditory — a fact, by the way, which may suggest how Krafft-Ebing (Die Sinnesdelirien,
p. 32), CJriesinger (Die Pathologic und Tkerapie der Psychischen Krankheiten, p. 100) and
Wundt (Grundzuge der Physiploqischen Psychologic, vol. ii., p. 353) have been led into
asserting that the visual class is the more numerous. Again, among cases where a human
presence was suggested, in spite of the recognised and unrecognised classes being shown,
by the canvassing of a limited group of persons, to be about equal, I have 172 visual
examples of the recognised sort to only 116 of the unrecognised, and 82 auditory examples
of the recognised sort to only 64 of the unrecognised. Still, remembering that the
vitally interesting point in the coincidental cases is, after all, the coincidence, and not the
mere form of the phantasm, the allowance which may thus be fairly made cannot, I think,
suffice to explain the proportions given in the text.

26 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

the theory of chance-coincidence, is a characteristic not of the
telepathic phantasms themselves, but of the distant events with
which they and other telepathic impressions coincide ; but it none the
less serves to distinguish these coincidences as due to a definite and
peculiar cause. It is the very large proportion of cases in which
the distant event is death.1 It is in this profoundest shock which
human life encounters that these phenomena seem to be oftenest
engendered ; and, where not in death itself, at least in one of those
special moments, whether of strong mental excitement or of bodily
collapse, which of all living experiences come nearest to the great
crisis of dissolution. Thus among the 668 cases of spontaneous
telepathy in this book, 399, (or among 423 examples of the sensory ex-
ternalised class, 303,) are death-cases, in the sense that the
percipient's experience either coincided with or very shortly followed
the agent's death ; while in 25 more cases the agent's condition, at
the time of the percipient's experience, was one of serious illness
which in a few hours or a few days terminated in death. Nor, in
this connection, can I avoid once more referring to the large number
of cases in which the event that befell the agent has been death
(or a very near approach to it) by drowning or suffocation. Out
of the 399 death-cases just mentioned, there are 35, or nearly 9 per
cent., where the death was by drowning, — clearly a very much higher
proportion than deaths of this particular form bear to all deaths,
for even of accidental deaths among the male population, only 5 per
cent, are due to drowning — and in 6 other cases the agent's escape

1 The point is one to which I have adverted in connection with dreams(Vol. i., pp. 308-10).
But there we saw a certain force in the objection that the coincident dream of death might
get remembered just by virtue of the coincidence, while other equally vivid dreams of
death might be forgotten. Let us see what would be implied if a similar supposition were
made in the case of the waking-hallucinations. Taking the number of adults in the
country as 24 millions, then, even on the extravagant assumption which I made as to the
size of the area from which our cases are drawn, the probable number of coincidental
phantasms for the United Kingdom, during the last 12 years, amounts to as many as 32 x
80, or 2560. Now the census gives i4«W^U>, or 96,744, as the number of persons in the
United Kingdom who, on being asked, would remember having had a purely subjective
visual hallucination of this type. Therefore, if these were all the hallucinations that
had occurred, 1 in every 38 of them would correspond with the death of the person whose
figure appeared ; that is to say, for each hallucination, the probability that it would
coincide with the death would be 1 in 38. Now for each of the remembered hallucina-
tions we found the probability of the accidental occurrence of the coincidence to be
nriffT- We thus arrive at the total which the purely subjective hallucinations,
remembered and unremembered, will have to reach in order to bring the probability
of an accidental coincidence up to -^ : they will have to be altogether "'jfe91 or 436
times as numerous as the remembered cases. But as 1 person in 248 remembers a case,
this will mean either that nearly every sane and healthy adult in the country, while
awake, has seen a phantasm representing a living acquaintance twice within the last 12
years, or that a very large proportion of them have seen such a phantasm more than
twice ; and that 435 out of every 436 of these startling experiences have been totally
forgotten by the persons affected.

xiii.] THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. 27

from such a death was a narrow one.1 And if we do not insist on
the form of death, but only on its suddenness, the above proportion still
remains a very striking fact ; since deaths by accident, even among
males, are only a little over 4 per cent, of the total of deaths.

We do not know why the conditions of death generally, or
of sudden death, or of any particular form of death,2 or of excite-
ment or collapse, should be effective ; but we at all events know
that the conditions are themselves unusual. Similarly in most
cases of experimental thought-transference, the agent's mind is
unusually occupied by its concentrated fixation on a single object ;
and whether it be in the curiosities of an afternoon or in the crises
of a lifetime that telepathy finds its occasion, the peculiarity of the
agent's state has at any rate that degree of explanatory power which
succeeds in connecting the rare effect with the rare cause. In neither
case can we trace out the actual process whereby the percipient is
influenced ; but we have the same sort of ground for refusing to
attribute to chance the oft-repeated apparitions at the time of death,
as the oft-repeated successes in guessing cards and reproducing
diagrams.

The only way of meeting this argument would be to show that
similar coincidences have been frequently met with in connection
with definite events which produced no unusual physical or mental
state in the person to whom they occurred. For instance, if B at a
distance has a vision of A on the day that A scratches his finger or
orders a new pair of boots, it would seem wholly irrational to connect
the two facts. Accordingly, if many, or even several, such coincidences
were on record, I should have to admit that the operations of chance
altogether overpass my estimate, and that the data on which the
previous argument rested must, therefore, be somehow defective.
Or, to take a case where some emotional disturbance is, as & rule,
involved, if it proved to be not extremely uncommon to have a
vision of an absent friend on the morning of his marriage, I should
feel that my argument was so far weakened ; for it would be
difficult to suppose that the emotions connected with that one

1 NOB. 48, 59, 60, 105, 138, 159, 165, 188, 236, 281, 282, 297, 341, 349, 416, 487, 513,
525, 528, 529, 535, 536, 537, 540, 541, 559, 570, 581, 582, 583, 596, 600, 603, 608, 636, 648,
659, 662, 664, 674, 675. I have explained (Vol. i., pp. 335-6) that cases are not.
admitted as evidence where the percipient's experience might be attributed to his own
state of apprehension as to the agent's fate.

2 At the same time, with respect to drowning, one cannot but recall the peculiar
vividness and concentration of psychical life which (from the accounts of many persons
who have been ultimately rescued) seem to characterise the earlier stages of that form
of death.

28 THE THEORY OF CHANCE-COINCIDENCE. [CHAP.

morning stood distinctly apart from those of other seasons dedi-
cated to happiness and the affections.1 But in point of fact we do
not find that coincidences of these types prevail. The coincidental
phantasms seem limited to seasons of exceptional crisis or excite-
ment on the agent's part ; and this limitation , in once more
marking out these phantasms as a distinct group of natural pheno-
mena, strongly confirms the substantial accuracy of the statistical
results.

I am not forgetting, in these final remarks, what I have expressly
stated before (Vol. I., p. 97), that the action of telepathy must not be
dogmatically confined to those examples of striking coincidence which
are suitable to be quoted in demonstration of it ; and even in respect
of such extreme affections as hallucinations of the senses, I should
hesitate to assert that they cannot be due to an absent agent whose
condition is not markedly abnormal.2 I regard it, however, as so
unlikely that this is often their source — I regard the probability as so
enormous that a phantasm seen or heard by A only, and representing
B who is at the time living a piece of ordinary life, is of purely
subjective origin — that the above argument remains in my view a
fair one ; and it is at any rate fairly addressed to those (whom of
course I have had chiefly in view throughout the present chapter)
who have not hitherto admitted or considered the case for telepathy
even as based on the markedly coincidental examples.

1 In accordance with this view, and in the absence of very special details, we
should feel bound to exclude from our evidence, as an "ambiguous case," any stray
coincidence of the sort that we encountered. The following is an instance :

Miss Keith Bremner, daughter of Captain Bremner, the chief constable of Fif eshire,
was sitting at the window of the dining-room in the forenoon (precise hour forgotten) of
the 18th June, 1884, when looking out of the window she saw, in a flower-bed about 20
feet distant, what seemed to her the face of Mary D., growing out of a yellow pansy.
The face was quite distinct and life-like, and seemed to be laughing as it looked at her.
Miss Bremner is quite certain that what she saw was not merely a fancied resemblance in
one of the flowers to Miss D.'s face. The face was too clearly and distinctly seen for
that. Moreover, it seemed to be of the size of life. There could have been no mistake
about it. Miss Bremner did not look long. She turned away, and the face was gone
when she looked again. Later in the day she told her mother what she had seen, and
Mrs. Bremner remarked, "I wonder when Mary D. will be married ; it should be about
this time." They heard afterwards that Miss D. had actually been married on that day,
and at about the time when Miss Bremner saw the apparition of her. Miss Bremner has
never had any other hallucination of the senses.

This account was written down by Mr. Podmore after an interview with Miss
Bremner, and submitted to her. She writes : —

" The above account correctly describes what I saw. — KEITH BREMNER."
Mrs. Bremner wrote from Sandilands, Cupar, Fife, on September 22nd, 1884 : —
"Mrs. Bremner begs to inform Mr. Podmore that her daughter told her immediately
she saw the face in the pansy. Mr. Podmore's written statement is quite correct.
The wedding took place on Wednesday, the 18th of June."

5 See, for example, the cases in Chap, xiv., § 7.

XIV.]

CHAPTER XIV.

FURTHER VISUAL CASES OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT.

§ 1. IN Chapter XII., a good many specimens of telepathic phantasms
were quoted, in illustration of certain special points ; and particularly
as showing what part in the phenomena we may attribute to the
obscure action of the agent's and of the percipient's mind respec-
tively, and how the original impulse may become modified in transitu.
A still larger number of cases remain, of which only a few present speci-
ally noticeable characteristics of dress, or development, or phantasmal
imagery ; but which have their share with the others in the cumu-
lative proof of telepathy, and include moreover several fresh features
and types. The present chapter will be devoted to visual examples.
In the " General Sketch of Hallucinations " (Vol. I., pp. 480-3
and 488), I mentioned the various degrees of externalisation
that the phenomena may present ; beginning with the ideal picture
which is not a sensory hallucination at all — which is realised as
a purely internal impression, as seen by the " mind's eye " ; and
ending with the actual percept, which, though equally the product
of the percipient's mind, seems to take its place in the external
world on a par with all the other objects within his range of
vision. Now between these first and last stages there seems a wide
gap; and if our review of telepathic incidents had to pass at one
step from the vivid pictures flashed from mind to mind, to the
phantasmal figure "out in the room," there might be a certain
difficulty in conceiving two such different-seeming phenomena as
having a similar origin. It is satisfactory, then, to be able to point
to several intermediate stages. That such stages are found in the
telepathic, as well as in the purely subjective or pathological, class of
phantasms, is only a fresh indication that telepathic phantasms, in
spite of their peculiar origin, are worked (so to speak) by the ordinary
mechanism of hallucination.

30 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

I may first quote a case which shows how the percipient may him-
self be doubtful as to the degree of externality that the phantasmal
appearance had. In the summer of 1884, Mr. Henry H. Ho worth,
M.P., of Eccles, Manchester, filled up a question-form with the
information that one morning, in 1857, he had a visual hallucination
representing a great-uncle ; and added : —

(218) "My great uncle died at the very time; and someone came to
bring me home from school, where I then was. I don't think I was at all
excitable or impressionable. My uncle was a very unlikely person for me
to have thought about. He had been for years troubled with gout of a
chronic type, but was otherwise hearty and well, and to a boy had the
appearance of robust health. He was much attached to my mother and
her children.

" HENRY H. HOWORTH."

Recounting the same incident on December 2nd, 1885, Mr. Ho worth
wrote : —

" I was a young boy about 12 years old, and at school at Whalley,
when I felt an overpowering sense that something very serious had hap-
pened to my great-uncle, who had been a foster-father to my mother, and
was much attached to me. The same day someone came to fetch me home,
as he had died. When you look across a gap of 30 years, memory is
blunted as to details, and I cannot pretend to fill in the story. I never
remember having a similar visitation."

On my pointing out that the second account differed from the first in
making no mention of any visual experience, Mr. Howorth wrote : —

" I could not say at this distance of time whether the experience I had
was visual or mental merely, for the distinction in the case of a boy would
perhaps not be marked in the memory. I can only say the impression was
a very vivid and sharp one."

I should regard this indistinctness of memory as a tolerably sure
sign that the impression was not of the truly sensory (that is, of
the most unique and startling) sort, but rather a vivid mental
picture of the type noticed in Vol. L, p. 209, and further exemplified
in the 6th chapter. In the stage next above this, the observer may
still find it hard to say whether what impresses him is purely ideal,
or whether his sense-organs are partly concerned — there being a sense
of externality, but not exactly a projection into the surrounding
world. Case 66 (Vol I., p. 267) was really an example in point — the
scene having apparently been something more than a vivid mental
picture but not confounded with the objective world, or located in
the actual place where the percipient was at the time. Very similar is
an experience which befell a master at a large public school, in the

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 31

summer of 1874 or 1875. Having been detained at home while a
party of boys, accompanied by some masters and ladies, made a
steamer excursion, he was, he says,

(219) " Standing vacantly at the door of his house, doubtless thinking of
the absentees and conjecturing how they were then employed. Suddenly he
seemed to see a boy slip, when crossing the landing stage from the quay to
the vessel, and fall into the water, wounding his mouth as he fell. There
the vision ended. Mr. A. [the narrator] returned to his work, in which he
was absorbed, until the return of Mrs. A. ; but so vivid was the impression
on his mind of the reality of the occurrence that he had looked at his
watch and noted the time exactly.

" On his wife's return Mr. A. at once said to her, ' Did you get that
boy out of the water ? '

" ' Oh, yes ; there was no harm done beyond the fright. But how
should you know anything about it ? I am the first to arrive ; they are
walking. / drove.'

" ' Well, how about his lip ? Was it badly cut 1 '
" ' It was not hurt at all ; you know X. has a harelip.'
" Mr. A. has no explanation to offer : these are the facts."
[Mr. A. was under the impression that the coincidence was precise.
But the time of the vision was about 7 p.m. ; and we learn from
the wife of the head-master, who was present, that the accident occurred
before luncheon ; therefore, if telepathic, the case was one of the deferred
class. This lady remembers that some of the party were afraid that the
boy had cut his face, till the fact of the harelip was recalled. If we
suppose the agent to have been Mrs. A., then the impression of the scene
(as in the somewhat similar dream-case, No. 101) would seem to have
been transferred, so to speak, ready-made — and to have received no
development from the percipient.]

The following case, though undoubtedly sensory, seems still to
belong to a somewhat indescribable stage of visualisation. If
interpreted as telepathic, it is further of interest as illustrating that
rarer type where the phantasm is not merely representative of the
agent, but visibly reproduces some actual percept or idea which is
prominently present at the time to the agent's consciousness (see
Chap. XII., beginning of § 5). The account is from Mr. F. Gottschalk,
of 20, Adamson Road, Belsize Park, N.W., and is dated Feb. 12, 1886.

(220) Mr. Gottschalk begins by describing a friendship which he
formed with Mr. Courtenay Thorpe, at the rooms of Dr. Sylvain Mayer,
on the evening of February 20th, 1885. On February 24th, being anxious
to hear a particular recitation which Mr. Thorpe was shortly going to give,
Mr. Gottschalk wrote to him, at the Prince's Theatre, to ask what the"
hour of the recitation was to be. " In the evening I was going out to
see some friends, when on the road there seemed suddenly to develop
itself before me a disc of light, which appeared to be on a different plane to
everything else in view. It was not possible for me to fix the distance at

32 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

which it seemed to be from me.1 Examining the illumined space, I found
that two hands were visible. They were engaged in drawing a letter from
an envelope which I instinctively felt to be mine and, in consequence,
thought immediately that the hands were those of Mr. Thorpe. I had not
previously been thinking of him, but at the moment the conviction came to
me with such intensity that it was irresistible. Not being in any way
awe-struck by the extraordinary nature and novelty of this incident, but
in a perfectly calm frame of mind, I examined the picture, and found that
the hands were very white, and bared up to some distance above the wrist.
Each forearm terminated in a ruffle ; beyond that nothing was to be seen.
The vision lasted about a minute. After its disappearance I determined
to find out what connection it may have had with Mr. Thorpe's actual
pursuit at the moment, and went to the nearest lamp-post and noted the
time.

" By the first post the next morning, I received an answer from Mr.
Thorpe, which began in the following way : ' Tell me, pray tell me, why
did I, when I saw your letter in the rack at the Prince's Theatre, know
that it was from you ? ' [We have seen this letter, which is dated " Tues-
day night "; and February 24th, 1885, fell on a Tuesday.] Mr. Thorpe
had no expectation of receiving a letter from me, nor had he ever seen my
writing. Even had he seen it, his knowledge of it would not affect the
issue of the question, as he assured me that the impression arrived the
moment he saw there was a letter under the 'T clip,' before any writing
was visible. [Mr. Gottschalk explains that from the construction of the
rack, which he has examined, the address on the envelope would be invisible.]

" On the evening of February 27th, by arrangement, I again met him
at the rooms of Dr. Mayer, and there put questions to him with a view to
eliciting some explanation. As near as possible, I give them as they were
put at the time, and add the answers. It is necessary for me here to
state that he and the Doctor were in complete ignorance of what
had happened to me. Having first impressed upon him the necessity
of answering in a categorical manner and with the greatest possible
accuracy, I commenced : —

" ' When did you get my Tuesday's letter ? ' ' At 7 in the evening,
when I arrived at the theatre.' ' Then what happened 1 ' ' I read it, but,
being very late, in such a hurry that when I had finished I was as ignorant
of its contents as if I had never seen it.' ' Then ? ' 'I dressed, went on
the stage, played my part, and came off.' ' What was the time then ? '
' About 20 minutes past 8.' ' What happened then ? ' 'I talked for a
time with some of the company in my dressing-room.' ' For how long ? '
' Twenty minutes.' ' WThat did you then do ? ' ' They having left me, my
first thought was to find your letter. I looked everywhere for it, in vain.
I turned out the pockets of my ordinary clothes, and searched among the
many things that encumbered my dressing-table. I was annoyed at not
finding it immediately, especially as I was anxious to know what it was

1 Cf. a remark in M. Marillier's account of his interesting subjective experiences,
referred to in Vol. i., p. 521 : — " Je ne pourrais indiquer ni la place de I'image que j'ai
objectivee, ni la distance a laquelle elle se trouve." The indescribableness of a certain sort
of externalisatipn is well brought out in the same writer's description of his_ vision of parts
of his body which could never actually be seen by him — e.g., the back of his head.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 33

about. Strangely enough I discovered it eventually in the coat which I
had just worn in the piece " School for Scandal." I immediately read it
again, was delighted to receive it, and decided to answer at once.' ' Now
be very exact. What was the time when you read it on the second
occasion ? ' ' As nearly as I can say 10 minutes to 9.'

" Thereupon I drew from my pocket a little pocket-diary in which I
had noted the time of my vision, and asked Dr. Mayer to read what was
written under the date 24th February.

" ' Eight minutes to 9.'

[Mr. Gottschalk has kindly allowed us to inspect his diary, which
confirms all the dates given.]

" Having established in this way, without any assistance, the coin-
cidence of time between his actually opening the envelope and my
seeing him do so, I was satisfied as to the principal part, and
proceeded to analyse the incident in detail. The whiteness of the hands
was accounted for by the fact that actors invariably whiten their hands
when playing a part like the one Mr. Thorpe was engaged in — ' Snake ' in
the ' School for Scandal.' The ruffles also formed part of the dress in this
piece. They were attached to the short sleeves of the shirt which Mr.
Thorpe was actually wearing when he opened my letter.

" This is the first hallucination I ever had. I have had one since of a
similar nature, which I will recount separately.

" FERDINAND GOTTSCHALK."

Dr. Mayer, of 42, Somerset Street, Portman Square, W., corroborates
as follows : —

"March 1, 1886.

" I well remember having read something [i.e., in Mr. Gottschalk's
diary] — the exact words memory will not allow me to give — which tallied
almost exactly with the story told by Courtenay Thorpe ; and can bear
positive testimony of the above conversation having taken place.

" SYLVAIN MAYER."

[We cannot lay any stress on Mr. Thorpe's impression as to the letter
and its writer, since that may easily have been accidental. But it is a
point to be noticed that he read the letter with very decided pleasure, after
a considerable hunt for it— in other words, that the reading of the letter
stood out rather distinctly from the general run of such experiences.
Though the incident is trivial, the close correspondence of time and detail
is strongly suggestive of telepathic clairvoyance. In the second case
mentioned, an illuminated disc was again seen, which " seemed not to
belong to the surroundings " ; but the details were not quite as distinctive
as in the above instance.]

The fragmentary nature of the hallucination in this case has
parallels, as we have seen, in the purely subjective class.1 The " disc
of light " is also to be noticed. (See Chap. XII., § 7, and compare the

1 Vol. i. p. 504. The case in the Phrenological Journal, referred to below (p. 38,
note), included visions of parts of figures, faces, half-faces, and limbs. There are many
degrees of incompleteness. Thus, one of my correspondents, when out of doors, was
startled by the sight of a man whose bearded face was clearly distinguished, but whose
form stopped short at the knees ; another, on waking, saw "a shadow bending over her,
but with a face that was distinct. A very interesting case is that of the quarter-length Mr.

VOL. II. D

34 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

" bright oval" in Vol. I., p. 503, the "large flickering oval," p. 176, and
the face " in the centre of a bright, opaque, white mass," in case 184.
The exact description — a " disc of light " — recurs in the dream-case
No. 464.)

In the next stage of visualisation the percipient sees a face or
figure projected or depicted, as it were, on some convenient surface —
the image being thus truly externalised, but in an unreal and unsub-
stantial fashion, and in a bizarre relation to the real objects among
which it appears. In this respect it might be compared to the
" after-image " of the sun, or of some object that has been intently
scrutinised through a microscope, which we involuntarily import into
our views of the surrounding scene. The following example is taken
from the Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton, by E. H. Dering
(1878), pp. 100-102. It exemplifies again the peculiarity observed
in the last case — the blood being a feature in the vision which we may
confidently refer to the agent's mind. Lady Chatterton narrates : —

(221) "My mother [the wife of the Rev. Tremonger Lascelles, Prebendary
of Winchester,] had not been very well, but there was nothing alarming
in her state. I was suffering from a bad cold, and went early to bed
one night, after leaving her in the drawing-room in excellent spirits, and
tolerably well. I slept unusually well, and when I awoke, the moon was
shining through the old casement brightly into the room. The white
curtains of my bed were drawn to protect me from the draught that
came through the large window ; and on this curtain, as if depicted there,
I saw the figure of my mother, the face deadly pale, with blood x flowing
on the bed-clothes. For a moment I lay horror-stricken and unable to
move or cry out, till, thinking it might be a dream or a delusion, I raised
myself up in bed, and touched the curtain. Still the appearance re-
mained (although the curtain on which it was depicted moved to and fro
when I touched it) as if reflected by a magic-lantern. In great terror I
got up, and throwing on a cloak, I rushed off through some rooms and a
long passage to my mother's room. To my surprise, I saw from the
further end of the passage that her door was open, and a strong light
coming from it across the passage. As she invariably locked her door
when she went to bed, my fears were increased by the sight, and I ran on
more quickly still, and entered her room. There she lay, just as I had
seen her on the curtain, pale as death, and the sheet covered with blood,
and two doctors standing by the bedside. She saw me at once and
seemed delighted to see me, though too weak to speak or hold out her
hand. ' She has been very ill,' said the doctor, ' but she would not allow
you to be called, lest your cold should be made worse. But I trust all
danger is over now. . . . The sight of you has decidedly done her

Gabbage, cited by M. Ribot, Maladies de la Personnalitt, p. Ill ; with which compare
case 301 below. For further telepathic examples, see cases 161, 240, 350 (in "Additions
and Corrections "), 553, 572.

1 Compare the dream-cases Nos. 432, 463 466, 467.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 35

much good.' So she had been in danger, and would not disturb me ! Oh !
how thankful I felt to the vision or fancy, or whatever it may have been."

Mrs. Ferrers, of Baddesley Clinton, Knowle, a niece of Lady
Chatterton's, wrote to us on October 24th, 1883, "This account is taken
from a diary of my aunt's." She adds later : —

" I have often and often heard my aunt relate that vision, but it was
not, so far as I know, recorded in any contemporary diary.

" Lady C. related the story to Lockhart and his daughter about 1843,
and then wrote it down in her diary. The entry is not dated ; the date
before it is May, 1843, that which follows, 1842, but it was evidently
written down between 1839 and 1848. The book is very badly arranged
as to chronology. I can't fix the date of Lady C.'s mother's death from
it except that it was prior to 1836. " R. H. FERRERS."

Here the picture, though not producing the impression of a solid
and independent object, was clearly no mere illusion, no mere
momentary translation of the folds or pattern of the drapery into a
human face ; it was accurate and persistent enough to resist a touch
which shook the curtain on which it was shown. It is a point of
interest that (besides a second veridical case given in Chap. XII. § 7,)
Lady Chatterton mentions having experienced another hallucination
which, like the one just quoted, appeared on a flat surfaced On
the theory of telepathic phantasms explained in Chap. XII., § 5, it is
of course quite natural that a veridical and a non-veridical vision,
or that several veridical visions, occurring to the same person, should
present this amount of likeness, as, e.g., in Mr. Gottschalk's experience.
But the point is one that we can rarely observe, as few of our telepathic
percipients have had any second hallucination of the senses at all.

But yet further stages remain, on the path to the final one of natural
solid-looking externality. In the following case the image appeared
with somewhat more of apparent relief than in Lady Chatterton's,
but certainly not yet as co-ordinate in any natural fashion with the
real objects in view. The account is from Mr. Richard Searle,
barrister, of Home Lodge, Herne Hill, who tells us that he has had

no other experience of a hallucination.

" November 2nd, 1883.

(222) "One afternoon, a few years ago, I was sitting in my chambers in
the Temple, working at some papers. My desk is between the fireplace and
one of the windows, the window being two or three yards on the left side
of my chair, and looking out into the Temple. Suddenly I became aware
that I was looking at the bottom window-pane, which was about on a level

1 She records — apparently in her journal — that, when sleeping as a child in a
"haunted room," she woke in the middle of the night, and saw a brilliant light on the
wall, and figures of men passing over it, as in a panorama, fighting. She inferred from
the words and gestures of her nurse, who was apparently sitting up in her sleep with
fixed and open eyes, that she saw the same scene ; and the nurse may possibly have been
the "agent" of the child's impression (see Chap, xviii. § 5).

VOL. II. D 2

36 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

with my eyes, and there I saw the figure of the head and face of my wife,
in a reclining position, with the eyes closed and the face quite white and
bloodless, as if she were dead.

" I pulled myself together, and got up and looked out of the window,
where I saw nothing but the houses opposite, and I came to the conclusion
that I had been drowsy and had fallen asleep, and, after taking a few
turns about the room to rouse myself, I sat down again to my work and
thought no more of the matter.

" I went home at my usual time that evening, and whilst my wife and
I were at dinner, she told me that she had lunched with a friend who lived
in Gloucester Gardens, and that she had taken with her a little child, one
of her nieces, who was staying with us ; but during lunch, or just after it,
the child had a fall and slightly cut her face so that the blood came. After
telling the story, my wife added that she was so alarmed when she saw the
blood on the child's face that she had fainted. What I had seen in the
window then occurred to my mind, and I asked her what time it was
when this happened. She said, as far as she remembered, it must have
been a few minutes after 2 o'clock. This was the time, as nearly as I could
calculate, not having looked at my watch, when I saw the figure in the
window-pane.

" I have only to add that this is the only occasion on which I have
known my wife to have had a fainting-fit. She was in bad health at the
time, and I did not mention to her what I had seen until a few days after-
wards, when she had become stronger. I mentioned the occurrence to
several of my friends at the time. ({ -p> q »

Mr. Paul Pierrard, of 27, Gloucester Gardens, W., writes as follows : —

" 4th December, 1883.

" It may be interesting for special observers to have a record of an
extraordinary occurrence which happened about four years ago at my resi-
dence, 27j Gloucester Gardens, W.

" At an afternoon party of ladies and children, among whom were Mrs.
Searle, of Home Lodge, Herne Hill, and her little niece, Louise, there
was a rather noisy, bustling, and amusing game round a table, when little
Louise fell from her chair and hurt herself slightly. The fear of a grave
accident caused Mrs. Searle to be very excited, and she fainted.

" The day after, we met Mr. Searle, who stated that in the afternoon of
the preceding day he had been reading important cases in his chambers,
No. 6, Pump Court, Temple, when a peculiar feeling overcame him, and
he distinctly saw, as it were in a looking-glass, the very image of his
wife leaning back in a swoon, which seemed very strange at the moment.

" By comparing the time, it was found that this extraordinary vision
was produced at the very same instant as the related incident.

" We often spoke of the case together, and could not find any explana-
tion to completely satisfy our minds ; but we registered this rare fact for
which a name is wanted. « pAUL PIERKARD.'

Here there was more than the mere representation of the agent;
she was represented apparently in the aspect which she actually
wore, but in which the percipient had never seen her, and in which

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 37

she would hardly be consciously picturing herself. We are scarcely
driven, however, in this case, to the difficult conception of" telepathic
clairvoyance " set forth in Chapter XII., § 8 ; for it is possible to
suppose that the idea of fainting, impressed on Mr. Searle's mind,
worked itself out into perception in an appropriate fashion.

The stage of visualisation in the next case is particularly inter-
esting. The narrator is Mrs. Taunton, of Brook Vale, Witton,
Birmingham.

"January 15th, 1884.

(223) " On Thursday evening, 14th November, 1867, I was sitting in
the Birmingham Town Hall with my husband at a concert, when
there came over me the icy chill which usually accompanies these
occurrences.1 Almost immediately, I saw with perfect distinctness,
between myself and the orchestra, my uncle, Mr. W., lying in bed
with an appealing look on his face, like one dying. I had not heard
anything of him for several months, and had no reason to think he was
ill. The appearance was not transparent or filmy, but perfectly solid-
looking ; and yet I could somehow see the orchestra, not through, but
behind it. I did not try turning my eyes to see whether the figure
moved with them, but looked at it with a fascinated expression that
made my husband ask if I was ill. I asked him not to speak to me for a
minute or two ; the vision gradually disappeared, and I told my husband,
after the concert was over, what I had seen. A letter came shortly after
telling of my uncle's death. He died at exactly the time when I saw the
vision. " E. F. TAUNTON."

The signature of Mrs. Taunton's husband is also appended.

"RICH. H. TAUNTON."

We find from an obituary notice in the Belfast News-Letter that Mr. W.
died on November 14th, 1867.

The phantasm here was perfectly external, and is described as
" perfectly solid-looking " ; yet it certainly did not hold to the real
objects around the same relation as a figure of flesh and blood would
have held ; it was in a peculiar way transparent. This feature is
noticeable, as it is one which occasionally occurs also in hallu-
cinations of the purely subjective class.2 It may thus be taken as one
of the numerous minor indications of the hallucinatory character of
telepathic phantasms (see Chapter XII., § 10).

1 This refers to a few other experiences of a different character, one of which, how-
ever, involved a hallucination of sight. The cold sensation described was a feature in
cases 28 and 149 ; and appears again in case 286, where the percipient describes a sensa-
tion as of " cold water poured on the nape of the neck"; in case 302, where what is
described is a sense of physical chill, without any flutter of the nerves ; and in cases 313
and 352. Compare also cases 211 and 263, where however, (as perhaps in some of the
other instances) the feelings may not have been due to anything more specific than
m om entary shock or alarm.

2 Of many subjective hallucinations, it has been specially noticed that they hid what-

38 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

§ 2. In the remaining cases the illusion seems to have been practi-
cally complete. They constitute what may be called the normal type
of these abnormal phenomena. The hallucination goes through no
gradual process of formation, and is externalised as fully and
naturally as a real object ; the agent contributes to it little, if any, of
the actual detail of his condition ; the percipient contributes to it
no special imagery or setting of his own.

The following narrative is from M. Gaston Fournier, of 21, Rue de
Berlin, Paris, an intimate friend of our esteemed collaborator, M. Ch.
Richet. He has antedated the occurrence by about 18 months.

" 16, Octobre, 1885.

(224) " Le 21 feVrier, 1879,j'etaisinvit(3 a diner chez mes amis, M. et

Mme. B . En arrivant dans le salon, je constate 1'absence d'un

commensal ordinaire de la maison, M. d'E , que je recontrais presque

toujours a leur table. J'en fais la remarque, et Mme. B me repond

que d'E , employ^ dans une importance maison de banque, etait sans

doute fort occup^ en ce moment, car on ne 1'avait pas vu depuis deux

jours. A partir de ce moment, il nefut plus plus question de d'E . Le

repas s'acheve fort gaiement, et sans que Mme. B donne la moindre

marque visible de preoccupation. Pendant le diner, nous avions forme' le
projet d'aller achever notre soire'e au theatre. Au dessert Mme. B —
se leve pour aller s'habiller dans sa chambre, dont la porte, reste"e

entr'ouverte, donne dans la salle-a-manger. B et moi e"tions restee a

table, fumant notre cigare, quand, apres quelques minutes a peine, nous
entendons un cri terrible. Croyant a un accident, nous nous pre'cipitons

dans la chambre, et nous trouvons Mme. B assise, prete a se trouver

mal. Nous nous empressons autour d'elle ; elle se remet peu a peu, et
nous fait alors le recit suivant.

" 'Apres vous avoir quitted, je m' habillais pour sortir, etj'etais en train

ever was behind the place which they appeared to occupy ; and the rule seems to be
that when the percept is completely externalised, it is solid-looking. But exceptions are
not infrequent. Whitish transparent figures were a feature in a pathological case first
published in the Phrenological Journal and Miscellany (Edinburgh), No vi., p. 290, &c.,
and described in the well-known article on " Spectral Illusions " in Chambers' Miscellany.
Wundt (Op. cit., Vol. ii., p. 357,) records the experience of au overseer of forests, who
saw heaps of wood all round him in his house, but also saw the furniture and carpet
just as usual. (Of. case 193.) Miss Morse, of Vermont, a careful observer, who has had
hallucinations at rare intervals during a good many years, tells me, that at first " they
seemed to be pictured just within instead of before my eyes." Lately, however, "they
have usually been projected into space ; but however real the apparitions at first
appear, a close inspection reveals that they have no solidity — that objects can be
seen through them. Another of my informants, who on waking had a hallucination
of a tall female figure, noticed that he could see a towel through her ; and similarly in
one of my cases of persistent dream-images, Professor Goodwin reports that with him
they ' ' retain an appearance of solidity for some seconds after waking, the furniture of the
room being distinctly recognised through these figures, like a dissolving view. " Another
correspondent describes such images as seen " as it were with one eye asleep, the other
awake." In one of Paterson's cases (Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal for Jan.,
1843), the phantasm appeared as though seen through gauze. I may also refer to the
telepathic phantasms which gave the impression of being formed from mist (Chap xii.,
§ 3, cases 315, 518, and Mrs. Deane's experience, p. 237). I have mentioned that
the disappearance is occasionally through a stage of increased tenuity and trans-
parency.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 39

de nouer les brides demon chapeau devant ma glace, quand tout-a-coupj'ai

vu dans cette glace d'E entrer par la porte.1 II avait son chapeau sur

la tete ; il e"tait pile et triste ; sans me retourner je lui adresse la parole,

" Tiens, d'E , vous voilk ; asseyez-vous done "; et comine il ne re'pondait

pas, je me suis alors retourn^ et je n'ai plus rien vu ; prise alors de peur,
j'ai pousse" le cri que vous avez entendu.'

" B , pour rassurer sa femme, se met a la plaisanter, traitant

1'apparition d'hallucination nerveuse, et lui disant que d'E serait tres

flatt^ d'apprendre k quel point il occupait sa pense'e ; puis, comine Mme.

B restait toute tremblante, pour couper court k son Emotion, nous lui

proposons de partir tout de suite, alle"guant que nous allions manquer le

lever du rideau. ' Je n'ai pas pens^ un seul instant a d'E ,' nous dit

Mme. B , ' depuis que M. F m'a demand^ la cause de son absence.

Je ne suis pas nerveuse, et je n'ai jamais eu d'hallucination ; je vous
assure qu'il y la quelque chose d'extraordinaire, et quant a moi, je ne

sortirai pas avant d'avoir des nouvelles de d' E . Je vous supplie

d'aller chez lui, c'est le seul moyen de me rassurer.' Je conseille a B —

de ce'der au de'sir de sa femme, et nous partons tous les deux chez d'E ,

qui demeurait a tres peu de distance. Tout en marchant nous plaisantions
beaucoup sur les frayeurs de Mme. B-

En arrivant chez d' E , nous demandons au concierge, ' D' E-

est-il chez lui' 1 l Oui, messieurs, il n'est pas descendu de la journe'e.'

D' E habitait un petit appartement de gargon ; il n'avait pas de

domestiques. Nous montons chez lui, et nous sonnons a plusieurs reprises
sans avoir de re'ponse. Nous sonnons plus fort, puis nous frappons & tour

de bras, sans plus de succes. B , emotionn^ malgrd lui, me dit, ' C'est

absurde, le concierge se sera tromp^ ; il est sorti ; descendons.' Mais le

concierge nous affirme que d'E n'est pas sorti, qu'il en est absolument

sur. VeYitablement effraye's, nous remontons avec lui, et nous tentons
de nouveau de nous faire ouvrir ; puis n' entendant rien bouger dans
Fappartement, nous envoyons chercher un serrurier. On force la porte, et

nous trouvons le corps de d'E , encore chaud, couche" sur son lit, et

trou^ de deux coups de revolver.

" Le me'decin, que nous faisons venir aussitot, constate que d'E —
avait d'abord tent^ de se suicider en avalant un flacon de laudanum, et
qu' ensuite, trouvant sans doute que le poison n' agissait pas assez vite, il
s'e'tait tire7 deux coups de revolver a la place du creur. D'apres la con-
station me'dicale, la mort remontait a une heure environ. Sans que
je puisse pre"ciser 1'heure exacte, c'e'tait cependant une coincidence

presqu' absolue avec la soi-disant hallucination de Mme. B . Sur la

chemine'e il y avait une lettre de d'E , annongant a M. et Mme. B —

sa resolution, lettre particulierement affectueuse pour Mme. B —

"GASTON FOURNIER."

In conversation with Mr. Myers, M. Fournier expressed himself un-
certain as to the correctness of his date. We have procured a copy of

the Act de De"ces, which records that the date of d'E 's death was

October 7, 1880 ; also that it took place at 10 a.m. If this was so, it

1 The vision in the glass is, of course, itself the hallucination in this case (cf. Vol. i.,
p. 444, note), and does not imply either actual reflection, or even a corresponding phantasm
to be seen in the room, had Mme. B. turned her head. That such a phantasm might have
appeared is, however, shown by the case in Vol. i., p. 469, note.

40 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

would still be quite possible that the body, which was clothed, should be
found warm in the evening. Probably the hour could not be stated with
anything like precision ; and it is as likely that the official record fixed it
too early as that M. Fournier's medical authority (supposing him to be
correctly quoted) fixed it too late. But we clearly cannot assume the
coincidence to have been nearly as exact as M. Fournier imagined.

Mme. B. is dead. M. B. is unfortunately in South America ; and
though we hope to obtain his account of the occurrence, it has not arrived
in time for insertion.

Mrs. Leonard Thrupp, of 67, Kensington Gardens Square, W.,

narrates:— "November, 1883.

(225) " In the month of October, 1850, I was staying in the house of
Mr. D., an East Indian merchant, No. 1, South wick Crescent, Hyde Park.

" One evening, a Mr. B., with three daughters, came to dine — the
youngest a blooming rosy girl of 17. Mr. B. had lately bought a house
in Devonshire, which was being added to and furnished. He made our
host promise to go down to the house-warming at Christmas.

" A few weeks afterwards, that gentleman was out one night, and his
sister, Mrs. R., and I sat by the fire in a large double drawing-room. She
was knitting, and from her position could see into the smaller room which
was not lighted. I had my back to that room, and was reading aloud one
of Charles Dickens' serial stories. All of a sudden she dropped her work,
exclaiming faintly, ' Good God ! ' ' What is the matter ? ' I cried. She
pointed into the semi-darkness, and whispered (as if awe-struck), ' There's
Louisa B.' I rose, looked, but saw nothing. She said, ' Are you afraid to
go in ? ' ' Not at all,' I replied, and went, and passed my arm round to
prove it was mere fancy on her part. However, the result showed that
was youthful presumption on my part.

" The next morning, Mr. D. heard the story from his sister in her own
apartment, where she breakfasted. He said to me in the breakfast-room,
' Did not you see anything last night, Miss Hill ? ' ' Nothing whatever,' I
replied. ' Well,' said he, ' I suppose you think us Scotch very superstitious,
but an aunt of ours and two of my sisters have the gift of second-sight.'

" That day passed, but the following day at noon, Mr. D. met me at
the bottom of the stairs with an open letter and said, ' That was no fancy
of Mrs. R.'s ; poor Louisa B. died at 9 o'clock that evening, of brain fever,
after measles.' " ANNE ELIZABETH THRUPP."

Since giving this account, Mrs. Thrupp has referred to old letters, and
has come to the opinion that the date must have been towards the end of
1847. We find, however, from the obituary in the Gentleman 's Magazine
that a death, which is almost certainly that of the Miss Louisa B. of the
narrative, took place on July 8, 1847. This suggests that the detail of
sitting by the fire is inaccurate — the temperature at 9 p.m. on that
day, as we learn from the Greenwich Observatory, having been 60° ;
but Mrs. Thrupp is quite certain that her memory is right on
this point. She further tells us that there were reasons why Miss
B. should have wished to see Mr. D., who was an old friend of the
family, but that she knew little of Mrs. R. Mrs R. has been dead
some years ; and Mrs. Durward, a lady who was her companion at the

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 41

time, and who — as Mrs. Thrupp recollects — assisted Mrs. R. to bed,
remembers no more of the matter than that Mrs. R. was excited. She
mentions, however, that Mrs. R. was " subject to a kind of seizure," in
which she would become quite rigid, and point with her finger to where
she imagined her husband to be, exclaiming, " There he is." These fits
occurred perhaps half a dozen times in a year, and were brought on by
any news of him that distressed her. Mrs. Durward never knew her to
have apparitions of anyone except her husband.

This case is an example of an appearance to a person only
slightly connected with the agent ; and it cannot but suggest the
question, would Mr. D. have seen the figure had he been present ?
I shall recur to the point in connection with "collective " hallucinations
(Chap. XVIII.,§ 7). As to Mrs. E.'s pathological visions, I may point
out that the extent to which they weaken the evidence for telepathy
afforded by the present incident may easily be exaggerated. People
seem sometimes to regard any real or supposed tendency to subjective
hallucination on the part of the percipient as at once fatal to an
alleged telepathic case. Now let us grant for the moment that Mrs.
R's visions of her husband prove a tendency to similar subjective
visions of other persons known to her ; and let us make the extreme
supposition that, unknown to her intimate attendant who never knew
her to have any such experience, she actually had 50 in the course
of her adult life — or on an average one in every 292 days, if we
reckon her adult life as 40 years. Then the probability of her having
a vision of the sort on the particular day on which Miss B. died would
be ^. But the probability that that particular vision would repre-
sent Miss B., with whom she had only a slight acquaintance, would
clearly be very small ; let us be liberal, and call it s"&. Thus the
probability of her hitting off the above coincidence by accident would
be at most rrW, even if we took only the identity of day into
account; and very much less if we relied on the alleged identity
of hour. It would surely be irrational to exclude from the cumu-
lative- telepathic evidence a case where the probability of accidental
occurrence remains as minute as this.

The next case is from General H., who, unfortunately, will not
permit the publication of his name. The account was procured
through the kindness of Miss A. A. Leith, of 8, Dorset Square, N.W.

"November llth, 1884.

(226) "In 1856 I was engaged on duty at a place called Roha, some 40
miles south of Bombay, and moving about in the districts (as it is
termed in India). My only shelter was a tent, in which I lived for
several months in the year. My parents, and only sister, about 22 years

42 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

of age, were living at K., from which place letters used to take a week
reaching me. My sister and I were regular correspondents, and the post
generally arrived about 6 a.m., as I was starting to my work. It was on
the 18th April of that year (a day never to be forgotten) that I received
a letter from my mother, stating that my sister was not feeling well, but
hoped to write to me the next day. There was nothing in the letter to
make me feel particularly anxious. After my usual out-door work, I
returned to my tent, and in due course set to my ordinary daily work.
At 2 o'clock my clerk was with me, reading some native documents that
required my attention, and I was in no way thinking of my sister, when
all of a sudden I was startled by seeing my sister (as it appeared) walk
in front of me from one door of the tent to the other, dressed in her night-
dress.1 The apparition had such an effect upon me that I felt persuaded
that my sister had died at that time. I wrote at once to my father,
stating what I had seen, and in due time I also heard from him that
my sister had died at that time. « j Q jj »

An obituary notice in Allen's Indian Mail shows that General H.'s
sister died on April 18th, 1856.

In answer to inquiries, General H. writes :

" By the context of the narrative you will see it was 2 p.m., broad
daylight. My vision corresponded with the exact time of death.

" I have never seen any other apparition.

" You must excuse my sanctioning my name being appended to the
account, though I am as certain of it as I am of my own existence."

[General H. further informs us that his parents are dead, and that
there is no friend living who may have seen his letter.]

The next case — a recent one — is of a very unusual type as
regards the effect on the percipient, and, perhaps, on that very
account suggests the telepathic explanation rather more strongly
than the facts warrant. But as regards the facts themselves, there
can be little doubt. The evidence, though it does not come from the
percipient, is of the sort which is as good as first-hand ; and this is
the more fortunate, in that, as it happens, there never was a moment
at which the first-hand evidence could have been given. The account
is in the words of Mr. H. King, of the Royal Military College, York

Town, Farnborough, Hants.

"March, 1885.

(227) " On Thursday night, October 30th [1884], H. M. and I went to
dine at Broadmoor. We stayed till 10 p.m. or so, and on leaving the house
were talking of different things, M. being quite as usual ; when, after
five minutes' walk, M suddenly stopped, and said, ' Look, look ! oh,
look ! ' We thought nothing of it at first, but he still kept pointing
with his finger at some imaginary thing in the darkness. The spot we
were in was very dark, with a wood on our right and a field on our left,

1 For this feature, compare the dream-case, No. 118.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 43

separated from us by a railing. Thinking M. saw somebody hiding
behind a bush I went forward, but saw nothing. M. now, still saying
' Look at her, look at her,' fell back against the railing and lay motion-
less with his back against it. We ran to him, asking him what was the
matter, but he. only moaned. After a while he seemed better. We
wanted him to come on, but he said, ' Where is my stick 1 ' — which he had
dropped. ' Oh, never mind your stick,' I said, for I was afraid of not
being at the college before the shutting of the doors ; but he would look
for his stick, which he found by lighting a match. We walked on
together, M., notwithstanding all my efforts to get him into conversation,
not saying a word. After walking for about a quarter of a mile, he
suddenly said, ' Where were they carrying her to ? I tell you they were
carrying her ; didn't you see them carrying her ? ' I tried to quiet him,
but he kept on saying, ' I tell you they were carrying her.' In a short
time he was pacified and walked quietly on for half a mile or so, when he
said, looking round in surprise, ' Hullo ! we must have come a short cut.
I know this house.' I said we hadn't ; but he said, ' We must have run
then. It seems only a minute ago since we left the house.' He several
times expressed his surprise at the quickness we had done the last half-
mile in. He was all right from this to the college.

" On Sunday morning he told me that something very bad happened on
Thursday night. An old lady who was very fond of him, but whom he hadn't
seen for a long time, had died suddenly of heart disease. She had been out
somewhere and had come home, when, as she was receiving some friends, she
fell dead, and, to use his words, she was carried out. I immediately asked
him at what hour did she die ? He said at between 10 and 11. (It was
a little after 10 when he saw his vision.) I could not get the exact hour
of the lady's death, as he didn't like the subject. When he told me this,
he knew nothing of what occurred on the walk home. When he was
told of it, he didn't remember a thing about the vision ; but said if he
hadn't known that he hadn't drunk anything (which was true), he would
have said he had been drunk. He seemed to have been in a sort of stupor
all the time. I think I ought to mention that he told me long before
this that he had seen a vision of a girl who had been drowned.1 This is
a true account of what happened.

(Signed) " H. KING (the writer of the above).
"A. HAMILTON-JONES."

Mr. H. King adds, " My friend [Mr. Jones] remembers perfectly
M.'s not being surprised at the news [of the death], and his saying it
seemed to have happened before."

[Mr. R. A. King, of 36, Grove Lane, Denmark Hill, uncle of the
narrator, through whose kindness we obtained this account, says : " M.
has such a horror of the whole affair that my nephew does not let me
write to ask him about the old lady's death." We are thus unable to
verify the date of the death independently. M.'s name is known to me.
He has left the Military College.]

The next case is from the Rev. F. Barker, late Rector of Cottenham,
Cambridge.

1 This other vision followed closely on an accident which had much distressed the
percipient.

44 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

"July 2nd, 1884.

(228) " At about 11 o'clock on the night of December 6th, 1873, 1 had
just got into bed, and had certainly not fallen asleep, or even into a doze,
when I suddenly startled my wife by a deep groan, and when she asked the
reason, I said, ' I have just seen my aunt. She came and stood beside me,
and smiled with her old kind smile, and disappeared.' A much-loved aunt,
my mother's sister, was at that time in Madeira, for her health, ac-
companied by my cousin, her niece. I had no reason to think that she was
critically ill at this time, but the impression made upon me was so great
that the next day I told her family (my mother among them) what I had
seen. Within a week afterwards we heard that she had died on that very
night, and, making all allowance for longitude, at about that very time.

" When my cousin, who was with her to the last, heard what I had
seen, she said, ' I am not at all surprised, for she was calling out for you
all the time she was dying.'

" This is the only time I have experienced anything of this nature. I
think, perhaps, this story first-hand may interest you. I can only say that
the vivid impression I received that night has never left me.

" FREDERICK BARKER."

We find the date of death confirmed in the Times obituary.
Mrs. Barker's account is as follows : —

" I recollect the circumstances well, upon which my husband wrote to
you. It must have been somewhere about 11 o'clock. He was not
asleep (for he had only just spoken), when he groaned deeply. I asked
what was the matter, and he said his" aunt, who was then in Madeira, had
appeared to him, smiling at him with her own kind smile, and then
vanished. He said she had ' something black, it might have been lace,
thrown over her head.' The next day he told many relations of the
occurrence, and it turned out she died that very night. Her niece, Miss
Garnett, told me she was not at all astonished that he should have seen
her aunt, for that while she was dying she was calling out for him. He
had been to her almost like a son.

"P. S. BARKER."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Barker says, " My recollection is of some
lace-like head-gear, as of a black lace veil thrown round the head."

The following statement is from Miss Garnett, who was with Mr.
Barker's aunt at the time of her death : —

" Wyreside, near Lancaster.

"October, 1885.

" I beg to certify that I was with my aunt, Miss , at the time

of her death in Madeira, December 6th, 1873. On hearing that my cousin,
the Rev. F. Barker, now living in Stanley Place, Chester, had had some
kind of a vision of my aunt at a time almost exactly corresponding with
that of her death, I told my uncle, from whom I heard of the occurrence,
that I was not surprised, since my aunt had so frequently expressed a
wish to see Mr. Barker during the last few days of her life

" LOUISA GARNETT."

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 45

The following case was first published in Bui^ma, Past and
Present, by Lieut.-Gen. Albert Fytche, C.S.I, Vol. I, pp. 177-8.

(229) "A remarkable incident occurred to me at Maulmain, which made
a deep impression upon my imagination. I saw a ghost1 with my own eyes
in broad daylight, of which I could make an affidavit. I had an old
schoolfellow, who was afterwards a college friend, with whom I had lived
in the closest intimacy. Years, however, passed without our seeing each
other. One morning I had just got out of bed, and was dressing myself,
when suddenly my old friend entered the room. I greeted him warmly ;
told him to call for a cup of tea in the verandah, and promised to be witli
him immediately. I dressed myself in all haste, and went out into the
verandah, but found no one there. I could not believe my eyes. I called
to the sentry who was posted at the front of the house, but he had seen no
strange gentleman that morning ; the servants also declared that no such
person had entered the house. I was certain I had seen my friend. I was
not thinking about him at the time, yet I was not taken by surprise, as
steamers and other vessels were frequently arriving at Maulmain. A fort-
night afterwards news arrived that he had died 600 miles off, about the
very time I had seen him at Maulmain."

General Fytche writes to Professor Sidgwick as follows : —

" Durling Dean, West Cliff, Bournemouth,"
" December 22nd, 1883."

" A paper containing answers to your list of questions is enclosed. I
don't think I have anything further to add, except to reiterate my convic-
tion that my friend's et<?w>ov did appear to me as stated. My friend's
death was a sudden one ; I had never heard of his previous illness, nor
had I been thinking about him in any way. In animistic philosophy,
savage or civilised, I believe it is admitted that an apparition of the kind
bears the likeness of its fleshly body.

" Answers to questions as to the apparition at Maulmain : —

(1) "The printed narrative was written from memory. I kept no
diary after my papers were burnt at Bassein (see p. 24 of book). There
are no letters extant which I am aware of which were written at the time
of the occurrence.

(2) " The news of my friend's death was conveyed by the public news-
papers, which arrived at Maulmain by the mail steamer about a fortnight
after the incident in question. They stated that the death of my friend
occurred in the early morning of the day his spirit appeared to me.

(3) " When the apparition was addressed by me, it did not respond by
word or sign, at least so far as I observed. I was not thinking of an
apparition. I took it for my friend in the flesh.

(4) "The event occurred some 26 years ago, and the persons who
resided near me at the time, and whom I visited on the morning of the
occurrence, are dead. The year following I visited England, and mentioned
the circumstance to several members of my family, and amongst others, I.
think, my cousin, Louis Tennyson d'Eyncourt, one of the London
magistrates, but it was not a matter that I ever talked much about.

(5) " I have had no similar experience. I have had no hallucination of

1 See p. 48, note.

46 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

sight or hearing, and have always been considered as a person of the
strongest nerve. " A. FYTCHE (General)."

Mr. d'Eyncourt writes from 31, Cornwall Gardens, S.W., on Dec. 21,
1885 :—

" General Fytche paid me a visit at Hadley a year or two1 before he
published his book — I should say from 15 to 18 years since, and told me
the story as narrated afterwards in his book ; and it made a great
impression on me and my family. I cannot remember what year he told
me, but certainly not 25 years since ; perhaps 20 would be nearer the
mark."

[General Fytche is under a promise not to disclose his friend's name ;
which prevents us from ascertaining the exact date of the incident.]

The next case is from Mr. Evans, of Byron Cottage, Chalford,

near Stroud.

"April 17th, 1884.

(230) "In the fall of 1867, I took a trip to Canada; and one evening,
the early part of October, the same year, I was sitting with a merchant of
Toronto, in the dress-circle of the theatre ; and during the evening my
attention was attracted towards a portion of the pit, which was, through
shadow, slightly obscured, by a face looking up at me in an intent, weird,
and agonising manner, that caused a feeling of awe to overpower me, as I
recognised in the features my twin brother,2 who at that time was in
China. The figure, although in shadow, appeared lighted up super-
naturally, and revealed itself plainly, so that I could not be mistaken about
the face. I instantly exclaimed to my friend, ' Good God ! there is my
brother,' pointing at the same time to the figure. He said, ' I cannot see
anyone looking up here.' However, I was so excited I rushed down to
the pit where he stood, but could not see anyone resembling him in
features whatever. I am not superstitious or a Spiritualist, but could not
get over the startling circumstances for some time.

" On my return home to England, shortly afterwards, much to my
grief and sorrow, I found my brother had died at the French Hospital,
Shanghai, on the 6th October, 1867. The incident in the theatre flashed
into my thoughts, and impressed me I had seen his apparition, and I took
the trouble to ascertain date of performance, and found it corresponded.
I could not be mistaken, as it occurred the first week I was in Toronto,
and the patronage of the military placed the performance precisely on the
6th October, 1867.

" I am prepared to make an affidavit that such are the facts.

"J. EVANS."

We find from a certified copy of the Register of Deaths kept at the
British Consulate, at Shanghai, that the death took place on October 6th,
1868 (not 1867), at the General Hospital.

I wrote to Mr. Evans, explaining that it would be the evening,
(10.37 p.m.) not of October 6th, but of October 5th, at Toronto, that would
correspond with October 6th, midday, at Shanghai. As I anticipated, it

1 The interval must have been longer than this, as the book was published in 1878.

2 Other cases where the agent was a twin brother are Nos. 76, 77, 78, and 134.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 47

turned out that he had assumed that October 6th in one place would be
October 6th in another, and had simply asked which opera was performed
on October 6th. He says : —

" I wrote to my friend in Toronto, asking him if the ' Grand Duchess '
were performed on October 6th, and he replied in the affirmative ; but at
the same time it was performed on the 5th, I am sure, as well as on the
6th. The company was performing opera bouffe during the entire week.

" I have never had any hallucinations before or since."

We have procured from Toronto a copy of the Daily Globe, which
shows that the " Grand Duchess " was performed on both nights.

[Mr. Evans has had no recent communication with his companion of
the evening, who was only an acquaintance ; and corroboration cannot be
obtained. The uncertainty as to the day of the apparition seems irre-
movable. If it was the 5th, the coincidence may have been quite exact ;
if it was the 6th, the 1 2 hours' limit must have been exceeded, unless the
death took place in the hour or two preceding midnight.]

Here we have to notice once more the luminous appearance of
the phantasm (Chap. XII., § 7).

The following narrative appeared in the Daily Telegraph, in
October, 1881. Unfortunately we have been unable to obtain corro-
boration or further details, as we have failed to discover the writer's
present address. We learn from the War Office that he resigned
his militia commission in August, 1880.

" West Brompton.

" October 25th, 1881.

(231) " SIR, — Of many comrades who gave up their lives for Queen and
country in Zululand and Natal, for none have I, or those who knew him,
felt a keener pang of regret than for Rudolph Gough. In November, 1878,
Gough, having retired from the Coldstream Guards, proceeded as a
volunteer to Natal, where on arrival he was given a company in Com-
mandant Nettleton's battalion of the Natal Native Contingent, with which
regiment he served in the first advance into Zululand. The Etshowe
relief column commenced its advance on March 29th, and reached the
Inyone River on the evening of that day. To all our astonishment, Gough,
who had risen from a sick bed in Durban, accompanied by Lieutenant
George Davis of his own regiment, arrived in camp at dusk, having ridden
through from Durban, a distance of 82 miles, in little over a day. Gough,
who had suffered badly en route, was again severely attacked by that
curse of South African Armies — dysentery — and was ordered to one of the
ambulances, where he remained until the morning of the action of Gingih-
lovo. The moment the alarm sounded, the poor fellow staggered out and
took command of his company, and afterwards actually led his men over
the shelter trench, when the cheer was started and the charge sounded.'
The excitement and exertion proved too much for my poor friend's
enfeebled frame, and utter collapse followed.

" On April 17th, just before ' tattoo,' I was sitting in the gipsy-looking
edifice that the officers of the King's Royal Rifle Corps had rigged up,

48 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

which we dubbed the ' mess house ' or ' banqueting hall,' finishing a
letter to a newspaper for which I acted as correspondent, when the
brigade bugler rang out ' last post.' I walked to the door, outside of which
I saw standing the man who, two days ago, I had been told was dying on
the other side of the Tugela. I could not describe on paper the extra-
ordinary sensation that Gough's unexpected appearance gave me.

" Some few days after I returned to Fort Pearson to re-assume com-
mand of the Natal Native Pioneers. After reporting my arrival, I made
my way to the post-office, where I was much shocked at being told of my
friend's death. The postmaster handed me a telegram, which had been
suffered to remain in a pigeon-hole for some days, instead of being sent on
to the front. It was from the civil surgeon, who helped to soothe the last
moments of my friend, and ran as follows : ' Captain the Hon. H. R.
Gough is dying. He has been asking for you all day. Come down here if
possible.' On subsequent inquiries at the hospital, I found that he had
died at exactly the hour I fancied I had seen him outside the mess house
at Gingihlovo. Prior to the occurrence I have narrated, I never had the
faintest belief in the actuality of supernatural l phenomena of any nature.

"STUART STEPHENS.
" (Late Lieutenant 4th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers.)"

Miss I. F. Galwey writes to us from 5, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin: —

" May 18th, 1885.

" I met two of young Gough's cousins on Saturday ; and they assure me
that the account given by Mr. Stephens if a perfectly authentic one,
and is fully believed by all the family ; but they know nothing of Mr.
Stephens, except that he was a comrade of poor Rudolph's, and that just
before his death he had expressed an earnest desire to see him."

[The London Gazette for July 22nd, 1879, gives the date of the death
of Captain Gough as April 19th. It seems very probable that the " 17th "
in Mr. Stephens' account is a misprint. For if he inquired at the
hospital and learnt the identity of hour, it is not likely that he made so
grave a mistake as to the day. But from the South African Campaign oj
1879, by J. R. Mackinnon, we learn that Captain Gough had been
desperately ill for some days before his death ; so that even if the vision
did precede the death by two days, it might still be connected with his
condition. It is clear, too, from the words of the telegram that his
thoughts had been directed to the percipient for some little time before his
death.]

It might perhaps seem that this case ought to have been disallowed,
on the principle that, when the percipient is in anxiety about the
person whose phantasm appears, there is an appreciable chance that
the appearance is the purely subjective creation of his own brain
(Vol. I., pp. 508-9). But it would, perhaps, be a trifle pedantic to apply
this principle to cases which occur in the thick of a war, where the
idea of death is constant and familiar. In such circumstances, the

1 I must once again disclaim all responsibility for this and similar expressions on the
part of informants.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 49

mental attitude caused by the knowledge that a comrade is in peril
seems scarcely parallel to that which similar knowledge might pro-
duce among those who are sitting brooding at home. At any rate,
if anxiety for the fate of absent comrades be a natural and known
source of hallucinations during campaigns, it is odd that, among several
hundreds of cases of subjective hallucination, I find no second instance
of the phenomenon.

The following account is from a lady, Miss H., whose name and
address may be given to private inquirers, and who would gladly have
allowed its publication had friends not been unwilling. Having
stated that on Thursday, November 16th, 1854, about 10 o'clock at
night, she had a vision of an intimate friend, who died that evening
at 7, she was asked to furnish particulars, and replied : —

"November, 1885.

(232) "I had had 16 hours' travelling in the interior of a diligence,
crossing the Apennines from Bologna to Florence. I was perfectly well, but
unusually tired. I was in- the Hotel Europa, in Florence, and was quite
wide awake, not having had the necessary moments in which to compose
myself to sleep. My sister had just fallen asleep. My friend stood at the
side of the bed nearest to me, near the foot, and looked at me fixedly. She
was in white, and looked exactly as she did in life. She was an old lady,
and had been almost bedridden for long. She had taken very keen
interest in our Italian tour. I lost my presence of mind, and woke my
sister. I also called out to my father, who was in the adjoining room, not
yet asleep, but too tired to do more than answer, though he remembered
the circumstance of my calling to him the next morning. Directly this
alarm was shown, the vision disappeared. It was both vivid, and produced
a supernatural sensation which I never before or since experienced to
anything like the same extent. " E. H. H."

We find from the Times obituary that the death took place on
Thursday, November 16th, 1854. Inquiries have been made at the hotel
in Florence, in order to obtain confirmation of the date of Miss H.'s
stay there : but the hotel changed hands a few years later, and the
information cannot be got.

Miss H. has experienced only one other hallucination, and that was
" in the height of a severe illness," when she fancied her maid was
at the bedside. In answer to inquiries, she writes that the sister who
was with her cannot recall the occurrence ; and adds : —

"The fact is she only woke for an instant, and as she is 9 years
younger than myself, and I saw she believed I had only been dreaming
this, I spared her. I had not fallen asleep. I did not argue the point
with her, or refer to it again for some long time after. It was the
same with my father. I called out Mrs. W.'s name, and he referred-,
to it as a dream in the morning. But I confided in a sister, then
recently married to a Norfolk clergyman, who was very near my own age.
I was the more led to do this as the lady who stood near me was her
husband's mother. The account goes on to say how exceptionally

VOL. II. E

50 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

interested the lady had been in the route and experience of the travellers ;
and concludes thus : " In those days such things were subjects of ridicule
and unbelief more than they now are, and I am surprised how lightly I
took what yet I felt positive was no dream."

The sister to whom Miss H. mentioned her experience writes to her as
follows, on December 4th, 1885 : —

" MY DEAR ELISB, — I fully remember your naming the vision of Mrs.
W. which you had on the very evening on which she died. We compared
notes faithfully at the time; and it was most remarkable because she
had not been visibly worse, and died at the last suddenly. She had
thought a great deal about you being in a Roman Catholic country at
the time of some great council, and had named in two or three letters that
she should be glad when you got home ; so you were on her mind. I
believe you named it in a letter, but I can't find it. But I am as sure
of the fact of your telling me (on your return home, and coming here on
the way) all particulars as if it was yesterday — the rooms en suite, and
our father hearing you call out to Memie, who had fallen asleep before
you ; and you naming ' Mrs. W.' to father, and he, supposing it was a
dream, trying to soothe you. And you, though feeling sure you were
awake, yet tried to think it was a sort of dream ' as when one awaketh.'
The first news you received from England was the account of the
peaceful and rather sudden death of one who was renowned for energy
of spirit all her life, and who was full of imagination and great love for
you. This is my statement. The dates were carefully compared, that I
am sure of. My husband is as certain as I am of all I say. — Your
affectionate sister, "M. A. W."

The next case, like the last, seems fairly to fall among waking
rather than "borderland" impressions, since a special reason is
remembered for wakefulness. It is, however, still more remote, and
depends on a single memory. The Rev. H. E. Noyes, of Christ
Church Vicarage, Kingstown, a nephew of Mrs. G., the narrator,
(formerly of the Parsonage, Kingstown,) vouches for the strength of
the impression made on her. " 1883.

(233) "On February 26, 1850, I was awake, for I was to go to my
sister-in-law, at Kingstown, and visiting was then an event to me. About
2 o'clock in the morning my brother walked into our room (my sister's) and

stood beside my bed. I called to her, ' There is .' He was at the time

quartered at Paisley, and a mail car from Belfast passed, about that hour,
not more than about half a mile from our village. When he could get a
short leave, he liked to come in upon us and give us a delightful surprise.
I even recollect its crossing my mind what there was in the house ready
that we could give him to eat. He looked down most lovingly and kindly,
and waved his hand and he was gone. I recollect it all as if it were only last
night it all occurred, and my feeling of astonishment, not at his coming in-
to the room at all, but at where he could have gone. At that hour he died."

We have confirmed the date of death in the Army List, and find
from a newspaper notice that the death took place in the early morning,
and was extremely sudden.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 51

The next account was given to us by Mrs. Swithinbank, of
Ormleigh, Mowbray Road, Upper Norwood. The incident occurred
about 1867. " 1882.

(234) " When my son H. was a boy, I one day saw him off to school,
watching him down the Grove, and then went into the library to sit, a
room I rarely used at that time of the day. Shortly after, he appeared,
walking over the wall opposite the window. The wall was about 13 feet
distant from the window and low, so that when my son stood on it his
face was on a level with mine, and close to me. I hastily threw up the
sash, and called to ask why he had returned from school, and why he was
there ; he did not answer, but looked full at me with a frightened expres-
sion, and dropped down the other side of the wall and disappeared. Never
doubting but that it was some boyish trick, I called a servant to tell him
to come to me, but not a trace of him was to be found, though there was
no screen or place of concealment. I myself searched with the same result.

" As I sat still wondering where and how he had so suddenly disappeared
a cab drove up with H. in an almost unconscious state, brought home by a
friend and schoolfellow, who said that during a dictation-lesson he had
suddenly fallen backward over his seat, calling out in a shrill voice,
1 Mamma will know,' and became insensible. He was ill that day,
prostrate the next ; but our doctor could not account for the attack, nor
did anything follow to throw any light on his appearance to me. That the
time of his attack exactly corresponded with that at which I saw his figure
was proved both by his master and class-mates."

The Rev. H. Swithinbank, eldest son of the writer of the above,
explains that the point at which the figure was seen was in a direct line
between the house (situated at Summerhill Terrace, Newcastle-on-Tyne)
and the school, but that " no animal but a bird could come direct that
way," and that the walking distance between the two places was nearly a
mile. He describes his brother as of a nervous temperament, but his
mother as just the opposite, a calm person, who has never in her life had
any other similar experience.

The next account is from Colonel Swiney, of the Duke of Cornwall's
Regiment. Possibly, in this as in some other cases, publication may
lead to our obtaining corroborative evidence from persons to whom we
have as yet been unable to apply for it.

" Richmond Barracks, Dublin, July 14th, 1885.

(235) "It was some time in the latter end of September, 1864, when
quartered at Shornclifie Camp, I thought I saw my eldest brother (whom at
the time I believed to be in India, where he was serving in the Royal
Engineers) walking towards me, and before I could recover from my
astonishment, the figure had disappeared. I perfectly well remember
mentioning the fact to some of my brother officers, and saying how .
curious it was, but never thought much about it until I received news of
his death, which had occurred about (as near as I can recollect, without
having made any note) the time I had imagined I had seen him — viz.,
September 24th, 1864 — at Nagpore, East Indies, and but for the fact of
his death, I should never probably have recalled the circumstance. I do

VOL. II. B 2

52 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

not attach much importance to this ; it might have been a coincidence,
remarkable certainly, but nothing more. I am afraid it will not be of
much use to you in your inquiries, as half its value is gone by my not
being able to bring corroborative evidence to prove that I had mentioned
the fact prior to hearing of his death, although in my own mind I am
perfectly certain I did so. Richard Edgcumbe was quartered at Shorn-
cliffe at the very time this occurred. « g_ Q SWINEY."

[It was from Mr. R. Edgcumbe that we first heard of this incident.
He did not himself hear of it until some years after its occurrence.]
In answer to inquiries Colonel Swiney adds : —

(1) "Years afterwards, in 1871, at the Cape of Good Hope, I wrote
a long account of it to a Yorkshire gentleman who was collecting data on
the subject of hallucination.

(2) " I have had a personal interview with Colonel Schwabe, who was
a subaltern with me in the Carabineers, and he cannot recall the cir-
cumstances at all, indeed has no recollection whatever about it. This
may be accounted for by the fact of his having gone abroad very shortly
afterwards, and we did not meet for some months after I had heard of
my brother's death. At the time I heard of his death I was stopping
with Charles Gurney, shooting, near Norwich, some time the latter end
of October, if not the beginning of November. When I received the
letter I knew what was in it ; and if I only knew Charles Gurney's
address, I should like to have asked him if he ever remembers the morning
I received the bad news before I left for London, saying ' How curious ;
I thought I saw him coming towards me at Shorncliffe a few weeks ago.'

(3) "The 24th of September, 1864, was a Sunday. I cannot say
whether that was the day I mentioned it. My brother died some time,
as far as I can recollect, after the family with whom he was stopping had
returned from church ; for I remember the letter saying : ' He was so
much better, and asleep, that we thought it safe to leave him for an hour
or so. On our return,' it went on to say, ' we found he was very
feverish, and he died that afternoon.' Now the time I saw the hallucina-
tion could not have been later than 2 p.m. Allowing for the five hours
difference of longitude, that would be about 9 a.m., and would not tally."

[Colonel Swiney seems to have reckoned the difference the wrong way,
At any moment the time of day in India is four or five hours later than
the time of day in England ; and thus, if the days were the same, the
death and the vision may have coincided exactly.]

The Army List for December, 1864, and Allen's Indian Mail for
October 20th, 1864, give the date of Lieut. John D. Swiney's death as
September 25th ; and it was the 25th, not the 24th, that fell on a Sunday.
When Colonel Swiney heard of the death he was clearly under the
impression that his experience had occurred on a Sunday — which is a
marked day ; and his subsequent mistake as to the day of the month seems
therefore unimportant.

The next case is from Miss Bale, of Church Farm, Gorleston.

"September 17th, 1885.

(236) " In the June of 1880, 1 went to a situation as governess. On the
first day of my going there, after retiring for the night, I heard a noise which

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 53

was like the ticking of a watch. I took no particular notice of it, but I
noticed that every time I was alone I heard it, more especially at night.
I even went so far as to search, thinking there must be a watch concealed
somewhere in the room. This continued until I grew quite accustomed to
it. It was on the 12th of July, when I was coming from the dining-room
with a tray of glasses that I saw what appeared to me to be a dark figure
standing just outside the door, with outstretched arms. It startled me,
and when I turned to look again it was gone.

" On the 23rd September I received news that my brother was
drowned on the 1 2th of July. I heard the ticking up to the time I had
the letter, but never once afterwards.

"P. A. BALE."

Writing again, Miss Bale says : —

" I enclose the letter informing us of my brother's death, also one from
the captain of the ship, for your perusal.

" I made no entry in my diary of the apparition I saw on the 12th of
July, but I distinctly remember the time. I sat down a little while to
recover my fright, and then I looked at the time ; it was 20 minutes past 6.
I enclose the address of a friend who I am sure remembers it as well as I do.
You will see by enclosed where my brother was when he met with his death.

" The apparition did remind me of my brother, as I last saw him in a
long dark ulster, and it was about his height, but that was all I could dis-
cover, for when I looked a second time it was gone. What made me
mention the ticking was the peculiarity of its following me everywhere,
providing I was alone."

The enclosed letter, written by the Rev. W. A. Purey-Cust on board
the Ship " Melbourne," announced that Mr. William Bale's death occurred
at 6 p.m., on July 12th, 1880, about 150 miles south of Tristan d'Acunha,
longitude 12 deg. 30" W. Mr. Purey-Cust has since told us that on that
day — and on that day only — the position of the ship had to be found by dead
reckoning, the sun not being visible. The error in time arising in this way
could not, however, have amounted to more than a minute or two, and Mr.
Purey-Cust gives particulars which make it almost impossible that he can be
mistaken in stating that the accident occurred at 6 p. m, by the ship's clock.

Mrs. Hart, of Baker Street, Gorleston, writes to us : —

" September 28th, 1885.

" On the night of the 12th of July, 1880, Miss Bale came to my house
to supper, and she told me that she was coming from the drawing-room
and she saw a dark figure standing just outside the door ; she appeared
very nervous. She said it reminded her of her brother, and remarked to
me then that she knew something must have happened to him. I asked
her if she noticed the time she saw it, and she told me that the apparition
had startled her very much, and she had sat down a little time to recover
the fright it gave her, and then she looked at the time ; it was 6.20. She
had previously told me of a ticking she heard everywhere she went, so long .
as she was alone, but directly anyone joined her it ceased ; and she told
me she heard it up to the day she received the news of her brother's death,
but not afterwards.

"H. HART."

Miss Bale adds : —

54 . FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

"September 24th, 1885.

" There was one incident I did not tell you, thinking it too trivial, as I
did not notice the date or hour, but I know it was shortly before I heard
the news of my brother's death. I had been in bed a short time, and I
heard a tremendous crash like the smashing of a lot of china. I felt too
nervous to go and see what it was, but nothing was broken or disturbed in
the morning, and for three nights in succession I heard the same. I am not
inclined to think that it was in any way corresponding with my brother's
death. I certainly have never heard imaginary voices nor seen imaginary
figures except the apparition I saw the day my brother was drowned."

[There seems to be no reason for connecting the ticking sound with
Mr. Bale's death, any more than the crash of china ; and it is probable
that it was due to a merely physical affection, to which the shock of
receiving the news perhaps put an end. It seemed right, however, to
mention it ; since, if it was a hallucination, it would tend to show that
Miss Bale was for some time in a condition favourable to purely subjective
hallucinations — -which would slightly weaken the force of the coincidence
of the visual hallucination with her brother's death. It will be noticed
that, allowing for longitude, the death occurred — according to the state-
ments made — about half-an-hour after the apparition But as the
difference is so small, it seems more probable that it is due to error in
Miss Bale's observation or memory, or in the time of her clock, than that
so close a coincidence was purely accidental.]

The next few cases, though depending in the first instance on
witnesses in a humbler station, are, as far as I can judge, faithfully
reported. The narrator of the first of them is Ellen M. Greany, a
trusted and valued servant in the family of Miss Porter, at 16, Russell

Square, W.C.

"May 20th, 1884.

(237) " I sat one evening reading, when on looking up from my book, I
distinctly saw a school-friend of mine, to whom I was very much attached,
standing near the door. I was about to exclaim at the strangeness of her
visit, when, to my horror, there were no signs of any one in the room but
my mother. I related what I had seen to her, knowing she could not
have seen, as she was sitting with her back towards the door, nor did she
hear anything unusual, and was greatly amused at my scare, suggesting I
had read too much or been dreaming.

" A day or so after this strange event, I had news to say my friend was
no more. The strange part was I did not even know she was ill, much
less in danger, so could not have felt anxious at the time on her account,
but may have been thinking of her ; that I cannot testify. Her illness
was short, and death very unexpected. Her mother told me she spoke of
me not long before she died, and wondered I had not been to see her,
thinking, of course, I had some knowledge of her illness, which was not
the case. It may be as well to mention she left a small box she prized
rather, to be given to me in remembrance of her. She died the same
evening and about the same time that I saw her vision, which was the end
of October, 1874. " ELLEN M. GREANY."

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 55

In answer to an inquiry, Ellen Greany adds that this hallucination is
the only one she has ever experienced. She tells Miss Porter that she
went to see her dead friend before the funeral, which accords with her
statement that she heard the news of the death very soon after it
occurred ; and there is no reason to doubt that, at the time when she
heard the news, she was able correctly to identify the day of her vision.

Her mother corroborates as follows : —

" Acton, July, 1884.

" I can well remember the instance my daughter speaks of. I know
she was not anxious at the time, not knowing her friend was ill. I took
no notice of it at the time, as I do not believe in ghosts, but thought it
strange the next day, when we heard she was dead, and died about the
same time that my daughter saw her.

" MARGARET GREANY."

[I have seen Ellen Greany, who is a superior and intelligent person.
She went over her story without prompting, giving an entirely clear and
consistent account, and standing cross-examination perfectly. But the
favourable effect of such an interview on one's own mind cannot, of course,
be conveyed to others.]

The following account was first published in The Englishman, on
May 13th, 1876.

(238) " A labourer named Duck, employed by Mr. Dixon, of Mildenhall
Warren Farm, near Marlborough, was in charge of a horse and water-cart
on the farm, when the animal took fright and knocked him down. The
wheel went over his chest, and he died shortly afterwards. Immediately
after the accident, Mr. Dixon despatched a woman to Ramsbury, where
Duck lived, to make known the fact to his wife. On arriving at her home
the messenger found her out gathering wood, but shortly after a girl, who
was her companion, arrived, and without being told of what had occurred,
volunteered the statement that Ria (Mrs. Duck) was unable to do much
that morning, that she had been very much frightened, having seen her
husband in the wood. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Duck returned without
any wood, and being informed by a neighbour that a woman from
Mildenhall Woodlands wished to see her, ejaculated ' My David's dead
then.' Inquiry has since been made by Mr. Dixon of the woman, and she
positively asserts that she saw her husband in the wood, and said, ' Hallo,
David, what wind blows you here ? ' and that he made no answer. Mr.
Dixon inquired what time this occurred, and she replied about 10 o'clock,
the time at which the fatal accident occurred."

On the appearance of this account, our friend, Mr. F. W. Percival, of
36, Bryanston Street, W., wrote to Mr. Dixon to inquire into the facts,
and received from him the following confirmation : —

" May 25th, 1876.

"As soon as it happened (Duck's death), I sent one of my female
servants to inform his wife of the sad occurrence, to a place called
Ramsbury, about four miles from where it occurred. But when she got

56 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

there, his wife was gone to get wood at a distant wood, the woman stopping
for her return at an adjoining cottage. But Maria returned without any
wood, saying she had seen her husband, and asked him how he came there —
telling the woman that she knew her business, that she was come to inform
her of her husband's death, and that she had seen him as plain as ever she
did in her life, and said to him, 'Hallo, David, what wind blew you
here ] ' but as she saw him no more, she became much frightened, and left
the wood."

"June 1st, 1876.

" The woman I sent told me, when she got to Ramsbury to Duck's
house, her neighbour told her that she was gone to get wood and her (the
neighbour's) little girl was gone with her. The girl soon returned saying
Maria Duck was much frightened in the wood, and had seen her husband
and spoken to him, but as he made no reply she became faint, and told the
girl to go home, as she knew something had happened to David. That was
before she knew the woman was sent. When she got home and found the
woman waiting for her return she said she knew her errand, and asked
her if her husband was not dead, and seemed much frightened, the woman
telling her he was very ill, and thought he would not be living to see her
again. When she got to Warren, she found him dead, and told us the
time she saw him, which was exactly the time he lost his life ; therefore I
think the public is bound to believe it, although it seems to us quite a
mystery. Duck's wife is now in Hungerford Union, her home broken up
by his death. The woman I sent is Mary Holick, has been living with me
some time, and her word is to be relied on.

" BENJAMIN DIXON."

Mrs. Duck has since died; but Mrs. Holick dictated and signed the
following account : —

"January 26th, 1886.

" I well remember about poor old David Duck. I am never likely to
forget it. The cart-wheel passed over his chest and killed him, and I
was sent down by Mr. Dixon to tell his wife at Ramsbury. She was not
at home ; she was out gathering wood with the little girl of a neighbour ;
so I went to this neighbour's house to wait. Presently the little girl came
in, and said that Mrs. Duck was in a great way because she had seen her
husband in the wood, and when she spoke to him and said, 'What wind blows
you here, Davie ? ' he disappeared away, and she fell back on the bank
half fainting with fright ; and the little girl ran down and found her like
it. So she had gathered very little wood. If the little girl had not told
me first, I never could have really believed that she had seen him. But
when she came back, about half-an-hour after the little girl (who had come
on in front, full of what Mrs. Duck had seen), it was all true. I shall
never forget her ; she came in with her hands stretched out, and said,
looking at me, ' She has come to tell me that my Davie is killed. I knew
he was ; I have seen his ghost. I didn't need anyone to tell me.' And
then she told us, afterwards, how she had suddenly seen him in front of
her, in his usual clothes ; and how she spoke to him, and he vanished.
She lived about half a mile from the woman I was waiting with ; and we
sent another woman to her house to tell her, when she came home, that
a person from Mr. Dixon's wanted to see her. So directly she told her,

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 57

she said, ' She has come to tell me my poor Da vie is killed ; but I didn't
want anyone to tell me, for I know ; I have just seen his ghost.' And the
woman said, ' Don't give way now, but come with me, there's a good
woman.' And they came ; and I shall never forget her as she came
stumbling up the steps, and looked at me and said, ' For God's sake tell
me ; my Davie is dead.' She had seen him just as natural as life, every
bit ; but the little girl never saw anything, only she knew Mrs. Duck had,
when she helped her off the bank, where she fell when he disappeared.
She was a very good woman, I think, and her husband was a very quiet
man ; and she was as strong as any man, and worked hard from early
morning."

We find from the Register of Deaths that David Duck died on
March 31, 1874.

[Mrs. Holick's account fairly comes into the class of evidence reckoned
as on a par with first-hand (Vol. I., p. 148) ; as, though she did not
actually receive a description of the apparition from Mrs. Duck's own lips
before Mrs. Duck heard the fatal news, she saw her in the state of
agitation, and heard her express the conviction, which the apparition had
produced. Mrs. Holick is quite clear that she herself was the first to
communicate the news.]

In the next example accident has made the evidence for the facts
very fairly strong ; but the case is to some extent weakened by the
percipient's knowledge that the person whose phantasm he saw was
ill. The case was first described to us by a clergyman as follows : —

"March 5th, 1885.

(239) "Some 18 or 19 years ago, I remember calling on a working
maltster, whose employer was living at Lincoln. His employer was ill at
the time, and I asked the man if he had heard from him lately. ' No,' he
said, ' but I am afraid he is dead.' And on my inquiring why he thought
so, he replied that on going out that morning early, he had seen his em-
ployer standing on the top of the steps that lead up to the kiln door, as
plainly as he ever had seen him in his life.

It was as he expected : the first news that came reported his
employer's death.

" I have no doubt the man I speak of either saw this appearance, or
believed he saw it."

In answer to inquiries, this informant says : —

"March 12th, 1885.

" Since receiving your letter, I have had the curiosity to look over my
old diaries, thinking I might have made a note of the occurrence, and
under the date .of Thursday, the 22nd of October, 1863, I find the

Dead,
following : — ' Report of Mr. W.'s death. M. saw his " wraith " on

A

Tuesday morning about 5 o'clock.'

" This differs somewhat from what I told you in my last letter, for I
said that the man had seen the appearance that same morning in which I
spoke with him. Here it seems it was two days before. But still he had

58 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

told me before it was known for a certainty that Mr. W. was dead. For
you observe the word ' dead ' put in over the yy. This I know from my
own habit was put in afterwards. There is no communication between
this place and Lincoln, except on the market day, Friday. At that time
of year, moreover, the carriers who go to Lincoln would not get back
before night, and consequently I should most probably not have learned
the certainty of the report until some time on Saturday. Then, instead of
making a new note of it, I simply put in the word ' dead ' to show that
the report was true when I first heard it. Moreover, I used the Scotch
word ' wraith ' instead of ' ghost ' or ' spirit,' as I had an idea that the
former word was applied to appearances before death.

" I observe that the man said ' about 5 o'clock.' Of course, this would
be a vague expression for any time up to 5.30, or thereabouts, when the
morning would not be very clear perhaps, but sufficiently so to enable one to
see an object some 10 or 12 yards off, and I am not sure it was quite so much.
" I cannot say that Mr. W. was dead at the time M. saw the appear-
ance, but he was certainly dead at the time he told me of it, otherwise I
should not have inserted the word ' dead ' where I did.

I may add that Mr. "W. had formerly lived in this village, and I had
known him well. He had gone to live in Lincoln only a short time before
his death. His malt kiln was his only means of providing for his wife and
family — five or six young children — and he had been in the habit of
coming over to see how things went on, twice a week. There is nothing
more natural than that his thoughts (and they must have been very
anxious thoughts) should have been fixed on that one place."

The following is the percipient's own account : —

"Ridley's Yard, North Gate, Newark, Notts., March 16th, 1885.

" I have received your letter asking me to forward you what I said
about my dear Mr. Wright, for he was a very good master. I said I saw
him standing on the steps, with one hand on the handrail ; my light went
out, and I saw no more, and he died, and I hope he is at rest. That was
at 4 o'clock in the morning, before he departed from us. « j ]yj;ERRILL »

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Merrill adds, on April 6, 1885 : —
" I am very sorry to let you know that I do not remember the date
that dear Mr. Wright died, but I think it was the latter end of
1863. I looked my old books over, but, with the trade being carried on
in the same way, I have nothing to go by. I saw him as plain as in the
middle of the day, for he stood just the same as he did when he came at
noon, looking on to the house for me to go to him. I never saw anything
before, to my mind." [The last sentence is in answer to the question
whether the above was his only experience of a hallucination.]

We find from the Register of Deaths that Mr. Wright died on
October 22, 1863, of " gastric fever." The apparition therefore took place
two days before the death, but no doubt at a time of critical illness. In
conversation, Mr. Merrill's wife stated that she remembered laughing at
her husband's account of his strange experience when he returned home.
Neither of them seems to have then connected the apparition with the idea
of death.

The following case was written down by our valued helper, Miss

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 59

Porter, from the account of Mrs. Banister, of Eversley, mother of the
percipient, Mrs. Ellis, of Portesbery Road, Camberley, who has signed

it as correct.

" August 5th.

(240) " In September, 1878, I, then residing in York Town, Surrey,
three times during the day distinctly saw the face of an old friend, Mr.
James Stephenson, who I afterwards heard died that day in Eversley, five
miles off'. I saw it first about half -past 10 in the morning; the last time
it was nearly 6 o'clock. I knew him to be ill.

(Signed) " MARY ELLIS."

A memorial card shows that Mr. Stephenson died on Sept. 19, 1878.

Mr. Stephenson had not been on friendly terms with Mrs. Banister or
her daughter ; but Mrs. Banister, by his desire, went to see him just before
his death.

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Ellis says: —

" I told my husband, and a young man, whose name is Swiney, at the
tea-table the same afternoon, and after leaving the table to go into another
room I saw it again — which was the last time. I did not hear of Mr.
Stephenson's death until' the next day, nor did I know that he was so
near death. My husband remembers it well, but the children were then
too young to notice such a thing. I have never seen anything like it
before or since, and I hope I never shall again.

"MARY ELLIS."

Mr. Ellis writes : —

" I quite well remember my wife speaking of the figure that she had
seen during the day. The next day we heard of Mr. Stephenson's death.

"E. J. ELLIS."

Mr. Herbert Swiney, writing on September 29th, 1885, from Tregar-
then House, Romford Road, Forest Gate, says that he only faintly
recollects the matter.

If correctly reported, this case presents two of the rarer features
which are common to telepathic and to purely subjective hallucina-
tions ; the fragmentary nature of the percept — a face only, — and the
repetition after an interval of some hours.1

The next case must be reckoned as one of non-recognition, as the
resemblance between the phantasm and the person who died was
not remarked until the fact of death was known. The narrator, Mr.
S. J. Masters, of 87, Clifford Crescent, Southampton, will hardly be

accused of excessive sentimentality.

"December 14th, 1882.

(241) " Last Easter Sunday, I was retiring to bed, just after 1 1 o'clock,,
and had stepped off the stairs on the landing that led to my room (my
parents' bedroom door being in front of me, about 10 or 12ft., and my door

1 As to the first point see above, p. 33, note ; as to the second, see Vol. i., p. 446, an
below p. 237, note.

60 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

being about 2ft. to the right, so that I had to pass it to get to my room).
I saw their bedroom door was open, and I was rivetted to the spot by
seeing standing in the room doorway in front of me, a figure of a female ;
although I could not distinguish the dress, I could plainly see the features,
and especially the eyes. I must have stood there at least 20 seconds, for
my mother, hearing me stop suddenly before reaching my room, at last
opened the door (below) and asked what was the matter. I then came
downstairs and stopped with them till we all retired together. The figure
collapsed when my mother called upstairs, and the light I held in my hand
shone through the doorway to the opposite wall, which had been obscured
by the figure, as if it had had a tangible body.

" It was not till the following Wednesday that my mother, on reading
the mid-weekly local paper, saw the death of a young lady with whom I
had once kept company for a short time. On inquiry, I found she died
about the same time as I saw the apparition. I feel convinced it was her,
for the eyes had the same expression, although I could not recognise her
at the time ; not having seen the girl for quite six months, I had almost
forgotten her existence. She died in decline, which accounts for her not
being about the town before her death.

"S. J. MASTERS."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death took place on
March 5, 1882. This was a Sunday, but not Easter Sunday. The
mention of the Wednesday paper seems also to be a mistake ; as the death
does not appear in the Wednesday issue of either of the two bi-weekly
Southampton papers, though it appears in the Saturday issue of one of
them, on March llth. These mistakes are not important. For even apart
from Mr. Masters' observation of the coincidence at the time, Easter
Sunday seems a very unlikely day to have been named, if the experience
had really fallen on a week-day ; and if it fell on a Sunday, there is no
reason to doubt that it fell on the Sunday before the announcement of the
death — i.e., on the day of the death.

The narrator's mother corroborates as follows : —

" I remember, perfectly well, the circumstance, and the effect it pro-
duced on my son at the time. He is not of a nervous disposition, nor
a believer in anything at all approaching Spiritualism, as we all belong
to the Church. His father and I thought it might betoken the death
of some near friend or relative, having heard of such things, but never
had seen so direct an appearance ourselves.

" ELIZABETH MASTERS."

[Mr. Masters has reason to think that the young lady's attachment
to him had continued. He reports that on more exact inquiry, he
finds the death to have occurred within a quarter-of-an-hour of the
apparition — probably after rather than before it. Asked if he had ever
experienced any other hallucinations, he replied in the negative.]

The next case is one of the most singular in our collection. It is
from Mrs. Clerke, of Clifton Lodge, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
S.E.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 61

"October 30th, 1885.

(242) " In the month of August, 1864, about 3 or 4 o'clock in the after-
noon, I was sitting reading in the verandah of our house in Barbadoes.
My black nurse was driving my little girl, about 18 months or so old, in
her perambulator in the garden. I got up after some time to go into the
house, not having noticed anything at all — when this black woman said to
me, ' Missis, who was that gentleman that was talking to you just now 1 '
' There was no one talking to me,' I said. ' Oh, yes, dere was, Missis — a
very pale gentleman, very tall, and he talked to you, and you was very
rude, for you never answered him.' I repeated there was no one, and got
rather cross with the woman, and she begged me to write down the day,
for she knew she had seen someone. I did, and in a few days I heard of
the death of my brother in Tobago. Now, the curious part is this, that /
did not see him, but she — a stranger to him — did ; and she said that he
seemed very anxious for me to notice him.

"MAY CLERKE."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Clerke says : —

" (1) The day of death was the same, for I wrote it down. I think it
was the 3rd of August, but I know it was the same.

The description,' ' very tall and pale,' was accurate.

I had no idea that he was ill. He was only a few days ill.

The woman had never seen him. She had been with me for
about 18 months, and I considered her truthful. She had no object in
telling me."

In conversation, I learned that Mrs. Clerke had immediately mentioned
what the servant said, and the fact that she had written down the date, to
her husband, Colonel Clerke, who corroborates as follows : —

" I well remember that on the day on which Mr. John Beresford, my
wife's brother, died in Tobago — after a short illness of which we were not
aware — our black nurse declared she saw, at as nearly as possible the time
of his death, a gentleman, exactly answering to Mr. Beresford's descrip-
tion, leaning over the back of Mrs. Clerke's easy-chair in the open
verandah. The figure was not seen by any one else.

"SHADWELL H. CLERKE."

We find it stated in Burke's Peerage that Mr. J. H. de la Poer
Beresford, Secretary for the Island of Tobago, died on August 3, 1863
(not 1864).

If this incident is to be interpreted telepathically, it is scarcely
possible to suppose that Mrs. Clerke's own presence did not play a part
in the phenomenon. The case would then be comparable to some of
the " collective " cases (to be cited in Chap. XVIII.), where one
of the percipients is a stranger to the agent ; the difference being
that here the person who should (so to speak) have been the principal
percipient was as unconscious of the impression which she received

62 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

as we have found the percipient to be in some of the experimental
cases.1 Another instance of the same kind is No. 355 (p. 256, and
see p. 267).

§ 3. I will now give a group of cases in respect of which the
hypothesis of mistaken identity has to be taken into account. The
apparition in all of them was seen out-of-doors, and in several of them
in the street — which is the place where such mistakes are most liable
to occur. Now, with respect to mistakes of identity, made at the
time when the person who seems to be seen is really dying at a
distance, one general remark has to be made — namely, that cases in
which they have occurred are not thereby at once put out of court,
for the purpose of my argument. For if telepathic hallucinations
are facts in nature, the possibility of telepathic illusions cannot
reasonably be excluded. Illusions, as I have remarked, (Vol. I., p. 460,)

1 As one more example of the psychological identity of hallucinations and dreams
(Chap, xii., § 5), I may quote an account of a dream which is an exact parallel to the above
waking case.

In the last week of February, 1885, Miss Harris, of 9, Queen Square, Bloomsbury,
W.C., wrote to us as follows : —

" On Thursday night, the 19th of February, 1885, I dreamed the following dream. A
servant, a Lincolnshire woman, has lived in our house for two years ; and of her, whom I
never see in the day, I dreamt, as portentously as if her troubles were my own. There is
nothing remarkable in this young woman's character or experience. She is but an ordinary
rather rough specimen of a village girl, quiet and respectable.

" In my dream a long country lane was before me ; in this I walked with the Lincoln-
shire cook, without speaking ; yet I knew that my companion was going with me as a sort of
escort to some errand of my own. Then a face appeared over the hedge, a solemn, silent
face, exactly resembling that of the one who noiselessly moved beside me ; the sternest
suffering was impressed upon the plain hard-lined countenance. From beside me the
country servant instantly departed to follow the warning voiceless form through the
hedge, into a little house. Only a long minute passed, and the servant rushed from the
hedge, absolutely wringing her hands, crouching to the ground in dumb agony. ' 'Tis my
sister called me, she beckoned me in ; but she will not speak : she will not have me with
her.' As she spoke the vision returned. It looked over the low hedge, with the same
indescribable expression of sadness unspeakable — of a terrible woe impossible of utterance.
It flung back its sleeve, and lifting one arm, pointed to a single white spot in the centre of
a finger. And as suddenly as I had fallen on this dream, so suddenly \ awoke. I tried
to cast off the shadow the dream had cast on me. But the same evening came the news
that the country cook's sister was very ill, and had prematurely been confined with a
child born dead.

"EMILY MARION HARRIS."

In answer to inquiries, Miss Harris adds : —

" Certainly I repeated my dream even before I left my room. I asked the housemaid
whether she knew of any reason her fellow-servant might have to fear, or to hear bad
news. She said, 'No, 'and after that I told my sister. Nothing was said about the
dream during Friday. On Saturday morning, when I returned from a class — having
dismissed the occurrence from my mind for the time — my sister immediately told me that
the coincidence of dream and fact were marvellously similar. The poor woman whom I
saw with such dumb appeal on her countenance, was alone, unable to speak, meeting her
trouble alone, her husband, who is a policeman, being on night duty. She thought it was
impossible to be heard, till she found a stick of his, and contrived to knock on the floor."

Miss Harris's sister corroborates as follows : —

"March 16th, 1885.

" It was directly I came out of my room, before I went down stairs, that my sister
told me the dream she wrote to you about, and which she had dreamed between night and
morning.

"CLARA DE H. HARRIS."

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 63

are merely the sprinkling of fragments of genuine hallucination on a
background of true perception ; and it is surely not more difficult to
suppose that a mind which is telepathically affected can project its
sensory delusion on some real figure which bears a general resem-
blance to the agent, than that it can project it in vacancy. But of
course the coincidence with A's death of an illusion in which the
perceiver mistook B for A would have far less force as evidence for
telepathy than the coincidence with A's death of a hallucination
representing him, simply because purely subjective mistakes as to
identity are far commoner things than purely subjective hallucina-
tions. To find the probability that a person will by accident make
a particular mistake of identity on a particular day of his life, we
must multiply the fraction number of day8 of Ms me b7 the number of
similar mistakes, in similar circumstances of light, distance, &c.,
that he makes altogether; and we must divide the result by the
number of acquaintances any one of whom, if chance alone acted, is
as likely as the one who died on the particular day to be the one
wrongly identified on that day. This process may reduce the proba-
bility of a telepathic explanation of the coincidence from odds of
millions to 1 (as found in the case of hallucinations, pp. 18-20) to
odds of thousands to 1 ; but in a cumulative argument, odds of
that magnitude are clearly not to be neglected. However, with
regard to the following specimens, or most of them, such considera-
tions are hardly needed. They seem pretty certainly to be cases of
hallucination, and stand, for instance, on different ground from the
incidents mentioned above (Vol. I., pp. 123-4), where the hypothesis
of mistaken identity seemed fairly plausible.

The first account is from the Chevalier Sebastiano Fenzi, of the
Palazzo Fenzi, Florence, a corresponding member of the S.P.R. The
peculiar melancholy described as preceding the vision may possibly
exemplify the gradual emergence of telepathic impressions into
consciousness, which was exemplified in Chap. XII., § 3.

" November 13th, 1883.

(243) " Some months before his demise, my brother (Senator Carlo
Fenzi) one day, as we were driving to town together from our villa of St.
Andrea, told me that if he should be summoned first, he would endeavour
to prove to me that life continued beyond the chasm of the grave, and that*
I was to promise him the same in case I went first; 'but,' said he, 'I
am sure to go first, and, mind you, I feel quite sure that before the year
is out — nay, in three months — I shall be no more.' This was said in June
and he died on the 2nd of September, the same year, 1881.

64 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

" Now, on that fatal morning (the 2nd of September), I was some 70
miles away from Florence, namely, at Fortullino, a villa of ours on a rock
on the sea, 10 miles south-east of Leghorn. Well, at about half -past 10 in
the morning, I was seized with a fit of deep melancholy — a thing
very unusual with me, who enjoy great serenity of mind. I had,
however, no reason for being alarmed about my brother, who was then
in Florence — as, although he had not been very well, the latest news
of him was very good, as my nephew had written to say, ' Uncle is doing
very comfortably, and it cannot even be said that he has really been ill ' — so
that I could not account for this sudden gloomy impression ; yet the tears
stood in my eyes, and in order not to burst out crying like a baby before
our family party, I rushed out of the house without my hat on, although it
was blowing a hurricane, and the rain fell in torrents, accompanied by
permanent flashes of lightning, and the loud and unceasing roar of the
sea and of thunder.

" I ran and ran, and only stopped when I had reached the end
of a spacious lawn, from whence are seen, close on the other side of
a small stream (the Fortulla), the huge stones or rocks heaped on one
another, and stretching for a good half mile along the sea coast. I
there gazed to try and see a youth, a cousin of mine, who, having been
born among the Zulus, retained enough of love for savage life to have
yielded to the wish of going out in that terrible weather, ' to enjoy,' he
said, ' the fury of the elements.' Judge of my surprise and astonishment
when, instead of Giovanni (such is my cousin's name), I saw my brother,
with a top hat and his big white moustachios, stepping leisurely along
from one rock to another, as if the weather were fair and calm ! I could
not believe my eyes ; and yet, there^he was — he, unmistakeably ! I thought
of rushing back to the house to call every one out to give him a hearty
welcome, but then preferred waiting for him, and meanwhile waved my
hand to him and called out his name as loud as I possibly could, although
with the awful noise of wind, and sea, and thunder combined, nothing
could naturally be heard. He meanwhile continued to advance, until,
having reached a rock larger than the rest, he slipped behind it. The
distance between myself and the rock was, as nearly as I can judge, not
more than 60 paces. I waited for him to reappear on the other side — but
to no purpose, and I only saw Giovanni, who was just then emerging from
a wood, and stepping on to the rocks. Giovanni, tall and slight, with a
broad-brimmed hat and dark beard, was altogether a very different type,
and I thought that my having seen Charles, my brother, must have been
a freak of my sense of vision, and felt rather annoyed, and almost blushed
at the idea that I. could have been so deceived by a sort of phantom of my
own fancy ; yet could not help telling Giovanni, ' There must be some
family likeness, for I must positively have taken you for Charles, although
I cannot make out how you could have gone from behind the huge rock
into the wood without my seeing you cross over.' ' / never was behind the
rock,' he said, 'for when you saw me, I had but just put my foot on the
rocks.'

"Meanwhile we went home, put on fresh clothes, and then joined the rest
to breakfast. My melancholy had left me, and I conversed merrily with
all the young people. After breakfast a telegram came, telling me and my
daughter Christina to hasten home, as Carlo had suddenly been taken very

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 65

ill. We made preparations to at once depart, and meanwhile another
telegram came, urging us to make all possible haste, as the illness was
making rapid strides, but although we caught the nearest train, we only
arrived in Florence at night ; where we found, to our horror, that my
brother had died just at the time when in the morning I had seen him on
the rocks, when, feeling that his moments were numbered, he had been
continually asking for me, regretting not to see me appear.

" In kissing his cold forehead with intense sorrow, as we had lived
together, and loved one another during our whole lives, I thought, ' Poor,
dear Charlie ; he kept his word !' « SEBASTIANO FENZI "

In answer to inquiries, Chevalier Fenzi tells us that his "eyesight is
excellent, especially at moderate distances." He has had one other
experience of visual hallucination — representing an unrecognised figure —
which was probably subjective.

The " Giovanni " of the narrative corroborates as follows : —

"Athens, (English address, 131, Tavistock Street, Bedford).

"May 3rd, 1884.

" My cousin, Sebastiano Fenzi, of Florence, has sent me your letter of
1 3th March last, with a request that I would give you my recollections of
the strange circumstance attending the death of his brother, Carlo Fenzi,
in September, 1881, a circumstance which made (and has left) a deep
impression on my mind. I will endeavour to recall the whole circumstance.
Nearly three years, it is true, have since passed, but my recollection of
the event, on account of its strangeness, remains clear.

"Passing through Italy in the autumn of 1881, I profited by the
occasion to visit my relatives. At Milan I learnt that the major portion
were at Fortullino, my cousin's seaside villa. Thither I accordingly
went, arriving the last days of August. Fortullino is a charming villa,
situated on the top of a cliff on the sea, and surrounded by deep growths
of trees and shrubs. The weather, during the beginning of my stay,
was very bad, rain, thunder, strong winds, and heavy sea. I remember
that on the morning of my cousin's death — none then dreamed the end
was near — indulging in a favourite weakness (?). — I started off alone for
an escapade along the shore. Descending by the hillside to the beach, I
passed on, leaping from boulder to boulder, climbing over, or passing
round them when too huge, past a bend, which hid me from a view of
the villa, for some distance along the shore.

" Returning for breakfast, I found the rain (driven into my face by
the wind) blinding, and, fearing an accident, entered the wood. The
undergrowth of the shrubs, and the wet state of the ground, urged me to
try the open again. This I did, emerging just inside the bend, in full
sight of the house. To my surprise I saw my cousin standing on the edge
of the cliff. When I approached him he remarked that there must be a
strange family likeness, as he had mistaken me for his brother Carlo,
being on the rocks, but wondered how I had managed to enter the wood
unseen by him, and then suddenly leave it again. I replied that he had "
not seen me on the rocks before leaving the wood (for I was out of sight).
The matter shortly afterwards dropped. Scarcely was breakfast over than
a wire arrived, summoning him and his daughter Christina to Florence, —
Carlo was very ill. They left at once, I staying, at their request, with

VOL. II. F

66 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

the younger members at Fortullino. Our next news was that Carlo Fenzi
had died — about the very time that Sebastiano had fancied to have
mistaken me for his brother. « JoHN DOUGLAS DE FENZI."

[Even apart from the evidence that " Giovanni " was not in sight
when the figure was seen, it would be difficult to regard this as a case of mis-
taken identity. For Chevalier Fenzi, being specially on the look out for
" Giovanni," would be specially unlikely to mistake him for someone else.]

Here we encounter a feature of which there are altogether nine
examples in the present collection1 — a previous compact between the
parties that the one who died first should endeavour to make the other
sensible of his presence. Considering what an extremely small
number of persons make such a compact, compared with those who
do not, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that its existence has
a certain efficacy. The cause of this might be sought in some
quickening of the agent's thought, in relation to the percipient, as the
time for fulfilment approached. But considering how often spontaneous
telepathy acts without any conscious set of the distant mind towards
the person impressed, it is safer to refer the phenomenon to the
same sort of blind movements as seem sometimes, at supreme crises, to
evoke a response out of memories and affinities that have long lapsed
from consciousness (see Chap. XII., § 9) ; on which view, the efficacy
of the compact may quite as readily be conceived to depend on its
latent place in the percipient's mind as in the agent's.

In the next case — from Major Owen, of 4, Grove Road, East-
bourne— the tie between the two parties was, we learn, one rather of

blood than of affection.

"November 17th, 1883.

(244) " In the year 1870, I went one morning from my then home, in
Clifton, to order various eatables for the day. On my way, I saw coming
towards me, on the same side of the street, J. E. H., a male cousin. To
avoid meeting him, I went across to the other side, and walked into a
fishmonger's shop, and watched him pass on. I remained in the same
place, looking into the street, and I saw him (or it) pass back again. I
felt so annoyed at the idea of J. E. H. being in Clifton that I hurried
home to tell my wife that I had seen J. E. H., and that he was evidently
making inquiries as to our residence, and would certainly be here directly.
I stayed at home all that morning, but J. E. H. never appeared.

" The next day, or day after, I received a letter from a son of J. E. H.,
telling me his father had died the very day I had seen the apparition.

" H. M. ARTHUR OWEN."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Owen says : —

1 See cases 146, 165, 169, 194, 355, 514, 526, 537 ; also Mr. Cooper's " ambiguous " case,
Vol. i., p. 507. In case 210 there had been a request, but not a compact ; and in case 197
a promise on the side of the person who died.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT, 67

"I have ascertained from the widow of J. E. H. that he died Tuesday,
November 2nd, 1869, not as I wrote to you, 1870, between 2 and 3 p.m.
I saw, as I believe to this moment, J. E. H., certainly before noon on that
day. My wife can testify to the fact of my having seen J. E. H. before
I heard of his death, as I went back to my house to tell her J. E. H. was
in Clifton, and she must expect to see him any moment."

Mrs. Owen corroborates as follows : —

" I perfectly recognise the circumstance detailed to you by my husband
of his having, as he thought, seen J. E. H. walking in the streets of
Clifton ; indeed, he came home on purpose to prepare me for his coming
to our house, and the whole day we were expecting he would appear.

" M. OWEN."

[Major Owen has had no other hallucination, and his sight is excellent.
In conversation, Mrs. Owen described J. E. H.'s figure to Mr. Podmore as
unmistakeable ; very tall and thin, with small black eyes and a very small
head.]

The next case is from the Rev. W. E. Button, of Lothersdale
Rectory, Cononley, Leeds. It will be seen that the impression may

possibly have been reciprocal.

"January, 30th, 1885.

(245) " I am not quite clear as to the exact date, but about the middle of
June, in the year 1863, I was walking up the High Street of Hudders-
field, in broad daylight, when I saw approaching me, at a distance of a few
yards, a dear friend who I had every reason to believe was lying
dangerously ill at his home in Staffordshire. A few days before, I had
heard this from his friends. As the figure drew nearer, I had every
opportunity of observing it ; and, although it flashed across my mind that
his recovery had been sudden, I never thought of doubting that it was
really my friend. As we met he looked into my eyes with a sad longing
expression, and, to my astonishment, never appeared to notice my out-
stretched hand, or respond to my greeting, but quietly passed on. I was
so taken by surprise as to be unable to speak or move for a few seconds,
and could never be quite certain whether there was uttered by him any
audible sound, but a clear impression was left on my mind, ' I have wanted
to see you so much, and you would not come.' Recovering from my
astonishment, I turned to look after the retreating figure, but it was gone.
My first impulse was to go to the station and wire a message ; my next,
which was acted upon, was to start off immediately to see whether my
friend was really alive or dead, scarcely doubting that the latter was the
case.' When I arrived next day I found him living, but in a state of semi-
consciousness. He had been repeatedly asking for me, his mind apparently
dwelling on the thought that I would not come to see him. As far as I
could make out, at the time I saw him on the previous day he was
apparently sleeping. He told me afterwards that he fancied he saw me,
but had no clear idea how or where. I have no means of accounting for
the apparition, which was that of my friend clothed, and not as he must
have been at the time.1 My mind was at the moment fully occupied with
other matters, and I was not thinking of him.

1 On the view of telepathic hallucinations which has been here advanced, this point
of course presents no difficulty ; see Chap. xii. §§ 5 and 6.

VOL. II. F 2

68 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

" I may add that he rallied afterwards, and lived for several months.
At the time of his death I was far from home, but there was no repetition
of the mysterious experience. " "W. E. BUTTON."

In answer to the question whether this was his only experience of a
hallucination of the senses, Mr. Button replies : —

" I have never had, so far as I can remember, any other experience of
the nature described in my narrative, and do not think I am a subject for
such impressions. This makes the solitary experience all the more
mysterious to me."

Asked as to his eyesight, he adds : — " I am not and never have been
shortsighted, but just the contrary. Nor do I remember to have made a
mistake of identity except on one occasion, and that in the case of a
person I had seen only once."

[Here the behaviour of the phantasm is very unlike that of a stranger
who found himself mistaken for someone else. The case is of course
weakened by Mr. Button's knowledge of his friend's serious illness, which
makes it more likely than it would otherwise be that the hallucination was
purely subjective (Vol. I., p. 509). But the fact of his friend's mind
having been distinctly occupied with him (possibly even telepathically
clairvoyant of him) is a point on the other side.]

Mr. Arthur Ireland, of the School House, South Witham, near
Grantham, wrote to us on January 5, 1884 : —

(296) "About 14 years ago, about 3 o'clock one summer's afternoon, I
was passing in front of Trinity Church, Upper King Street, Leicester, when
I saw on the opposite side of the street a very old playmate, whom, having
left the town to learn some business, I had for some time lost sight of. I
thought it odd he took no notice of me ; and while following him with my
eyes, deliberating whether I should accost him or not, I called after him
by name, and was somewhat surprised at not being able to follow him any
further, or to say into which house he had gone, for I felt persuaded he
had gone into one. The next week I was informed of his somewhat
sudden death at Burton-on-Trent, at about the time I felt certain he was
passing in front of me. What struck me most at the time was that he
should take no notice of me, and that he should go along so noiselessly1 and
disappear so suddenly, but that it was E. P. I had seen I never for one
moment doubted. I have always looked upon this as a hallucination, but
why it should have occurred at that particular time, and to me, I could
never make out. " ARTHUR IRELAND."

To inquiries, Mr. Ireland replies : —

(1) "I have never on any other occasion had any hallucination of the
senses at all.

(2) " I mentioned the incident of having met E. P. to my mother, and
remarked on the seeming slight of his not acknowledging me. Of course,
when the news of his death came, mother remarked that I was mistaken,

1 This feature recurs in Dr. Leslie's narrative, p. 252. Visual hallucinations, as we
have seen, often involve further the sounds that a real person would have made ; but the
absence of this complete development (cf. case 252) is only on a par with the common
occurrence of hallucinations of voices close at hand, where no visible phantasm appears.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 69

and although not feeling convinced, I had to assent to such a seemingly
apparent truism. My mother has since died, or we might have had this
added testimony.

(3) " I am thankful to say that my eyesight is good, and I remember
no instance of mistaking one person for another. Of course I could not
swear that there was no mistake ; but I do assert that I, without knowing
he had left the town, and with nothing to make me think of him, was
suddenly certain that E. P. was coming towards me on the opposite side
of the street ; that I watched him attentively for any sign of recognition ;
that I called after him, and could never explain his disappearance, or
account for the unnatural noiselessness of his movements or the suddenness
of his appearance.

" I conclude by assuring you that so far I have been of a very realistic
turn of mind, and am not aware that I am in the least superstitious or
even imaginative. That which I have written is the truth, according to
my experience, placed at your disposal to help, if of any service, in the
unravelling of that for which at present there seems no adequate
explanation."

Mr. Ireland was in doubt as to the exact date. We learn through a
sister of Mr. E. P.'s — and have confirmed her statement by the Register —
that the death occurred on January 9th, 1869. Mr. Ireland was therefore
mistaken in referring it to the summer. But he is quite certain that he
" received the information of it within a week after it took place," and
remarked to his mother on the exactitude of the coincidence.

[Here the words " without knowing he had left the town " somewhat
weaken the case. But the mode of appearance and disappearance strongly
suggests that the figure seen was not a stranger mistaken for E. P. but a
hallucination ; and if so, there is the strongest probability that it was
telepathic.]

The next case is taken from a book called John Leifchild, D.D.,
his Public Ministry ; founded upon an Autobiography, by J. R.
Leifchild, his son (published by Jackson, Walford and Hodder, 1863).
The account is in the words of Dr. Leifchild himself, not of his son.

(247) " I give an account of an occurrence which soon after befell my
aunt, for the truth of which, as an event, I can vouch, but of which I can
offer no solution. She was standing in a little shop fronting the street while
a customer was being served. On a sudden, her absent son passed in the
street before her, and, as he passed, gave her a look of recognition, which
so surprised and overjoyed her that, forgetting everything else, she rushed
into the street after him. When there, she could not see him, and
concluded that he was gone to the alley, which led to the abbey, and meant to
hide himself away. We went, as soon as we could assemble, in search of
him, but could not discover any trace of the son. My aunt then concluded
that she had seen his spirit, and fell seriously ill. I noticed the circumr^
stances in writing at the time, and pondered over them.

" A few weeks afterwards my father came to see us, and my aunt truly
divined his errand. He had received a letter from the captain of the
ship in which her son was sailing, stating that the unfortunate lad had
fallen from the mast, and fractured his skull. While lying on his

70 FURTHER VISUAL CASES . [CHAP.

death-bed he directed the captain to write to my father, whose address he
named. The dates of this misfortune and the hallucination corresponded
precisely."

[This certainly cannot be proved not to have been a case of mistaken
identity ; for the " look of recognition " cannot be pressed, that being just
the sort of detail that might creep in afterwards, and the evidence for it
being second-hand. At the same time, the sense of reality seems to
have been of a kind which excluded this hypothesis in the percipient's
mind : people do not as a rule " fall seriously ill " as a consequence of
mistaking one person for another in the street.]

The next case was thus narrated by Mr. Andrew Lang, in an article
on " Apparitions," Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. II., p. 207.

(248) " The writer once met, as he believed, a well-known and learned
member of an English University [Professor Conington], who was really
dying at a place more than 100 miles distant from that in which he was
seen. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that the writer did not
mistake some other individual for the extremely noticeable person whom
he seemed to see, the coincidence between the subjective impression and
the death of the learned professor is, to say the least, curious."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Lang wrote, on January 30th, 1886 : —

" Savile Club.

" It was when I was living in St. Giles that I saw the real or sham
J. C. I was under the lamp in Oriel Lane, about 9 at night, in winter,
and I certainly had a very good view of him. I believe this to have been
on a Thursday, but it may have been a Friday. I think it was on the
Saturday that Scott Holland did not come to a breakfast party, and sent
a note that Conington was dangerously ill. I said, ' He can't have been
very ill on Thursday (or yesterday, I can't be sure which), for I met him
near Corpus.'

" I am constantly failing to recognise people. Conington, however, was
not easily mistaken, and I know no one in Oxford who was at all like him.
Whoever he was, he was in cap and gown. u j^ LANG."

Mr. Lang tells us that he has never had a hallucination on any other
occasion.

The notice of the death in the Times shows that it took place on
Saturday, October 23, 1869 ; but information received from Canon Scott
Holland, who heard from Professor Conington four times in the course of
the week, leaves no doubt that he knew himself to be dying on the
Thursday night. The experience narrated therefore coincided with a
time of critical illness, though not with the death.

[This is, no doubt, an experience which might have been without
difficulty accounted for as a mistake of identity, had the person who seemed
to be seen been in a normal state at the time. But in any such case the
coincidence is an inexpugnable fact or factor, the probability of which, as
the result of accident, cannot reasonably be estimated save in relation to
numbers of similar and more striking examples; and its force, as I
pointed out above (pp. 62-3), is by no means entirely dependent on the
supposition that the experience was a hallucination and not an illusion.]

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 71

The next case is from Mr. T. H. Carr, of 1, The Terrace, Carlton

Hill, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds.

"February 18th, 1886.

(249) " I cannot make you fully understand the case unless you are
acquainted with the Friends' Meeting House premises. In passing through
the front gate, the Meeting House is on the left, and my house, the first
of 5 terrace houses, up a few steps on the right hand ; but they stand
back a few feet at the end of a high wall. And on account of the height
of this wall we could only just see the top part of the head and hat of any
gentleman coming.

" It was when I was standing- at my front window on Christmas Day,
1884, that I saw the head of a gentleman walking up the yard which I
thought was Daniel Pickard coming up, but on getting nearer I saw
that the hair was whiter than Daniel's ; and on looking again, I thought
it was the head and hat of Mr. X. But to see him right, I thought he
would think me rude to be standing close to the window and watching him
turn the corner, so I walked backwards a couple of paces, expecting to see
him pass close to the terrace. But, to my surprise, he vanished in a
moment, and I saw no more. I was struck with the affair, and took out
my watch, and it was just 4 o'clock.

" A couple of hours after, B. Geddard, the caretaker, came down the
yard, and said, ' Hast thou heard that Mr. X. is dead ? ' I said, ' No ;
when has he died?' He replied, ' To-day at 4 o'clock.'

-. "THOMAS H. CARR."

We find from a newspaper obituary that Mr. X. died on December
25th, 1884, after an illness of less than a week.

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Carr adds that for distant objects his eye-
sight is excellent ; that he has never on any other occasion experienced
any sort of hallucination of the senses ; and that, though he knew Mr. X. to
be ill, he had no idea that the illness was serious.

It was impossible to judge of this case without an actual observation
on the spot. Mr. Carr's house stands in an enclosure which is divided
from the street by open railings ; and nobody would be walking along the
line which the figure appeared to be taking, unless he were coming to the
small row of houses of which Mr. Carr's is the first — in which case his
whole figure would be visible in a very few seconds after the upper
part of it came into view. To disappear as it did, the figure would have
had to retire by the way that it came, but closer to the wall. Mr. Carr
was perfectly familiar with the aspect of Mr. X., who used frequently to
come, to see him, and whose head and tall hat were quite sufficient to
distinguish him from other people known to enter this private enclosure.
The broad brim of the hat was peculiar ; and Mr. X. also walked with a
peculiar droop of the head Moreover, the fact that at the first moment Mr.
Carr took the person he saw for some one else, and then corrected his judg-
ment, shows at any rate that his recognition of Mr. X. was not that of a
mere hasty glance. He was extremely startled by the sudden disappear-
ance of his friend, and at once hurried out to see what could have become
of him, but no one the least resembling him was in view. The incident
perplexed and disturbed him at the moment far more than the words " I
was struck with the affair " might seem to imply.

72 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

The final case of this group (procured for us by the Rev. J. A.
Macdonald, of Rhyl,) is from Mr. Schofield, of 350, Belgrade Terrace,
Manchester, a manufacturing chemist, and an office-bearer in the
Collyhurst Wesleyan Church.

(250) " About the year 1857, while I was apprenticed at Bacup, I came
home to Newchurch, in Rossendale, one Wednesday evening. On arriving at
the gate of the garden fronting my father's house, I saw Martha Mills, a
young woman with whom we were well acquainted, at the gate as if coming
from the house. I spoke to her, but she made no answer, and I passed on
into the house. When I got into the house I remarked to my mother
that I had met Martha Mills at the gate, and that she did not answer
me when I spoke to her. My mother [since dead] said, ' You could not
have seen her, for she is either dead or dying.' I had not heard of her
illness ; but she died about the same time that I had seen her.

" RICHARD SCHOFIELD."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Schofield tells us that he has never had
any other visual hallucination. He adds : —

" It was in the winter, and the light would not be sufficient to enable
me to distinguish a living person at the distance at which Martha Mills
appeared to me ; yet I saw her very distinctly, and at the time had no
doubt that it was she. I was not astonished at the time at the vividness
with which I had seen her features ; for I did not until afterwards reflect
upon the distance of the street lamp, and general darkness of the night."

The Register of Deaths confirms Mr. Schofield's recollection that the
occurrence fell on a Wednesday, and in the winter, but shows that it is
rather more remote than he supposed — the date of Martha Mills's death
being December 15, 1852. The coincidence of time between the vision
and the death was, as far as he can remember, exact. Martha Mills was
just a neighbour, who would be in and out at the Schofields' without
ceremony.

Here Mr. Schofield asserts that he saw the face distinctly ; but
afterwards adds that the .light was insufficient to admit of such
distinct perception, had the figure been a real person. Now, taken
together, these statements might seem to tell in favour of the abnormal
— the hallucinatory — nature of the vision :l at the same time it would
be an equally reasonable inference that perhaps he did not really see
the face as distinctly as he afterwards supposed. When persons whom

1 See Vol. i., p. 462, note, and Chap, xii., § 7. A case of subjective hallucination expe-
rienced by the Rev. P.H. Newnham further illustrates the point. He distinctly saw in church
the figure of a parishioner of marked appearance, who, it turned out, had not been there, and
whose place had not been occupied by anyone else. " When I became convinced it was a
hallucination, it then occurred to me that the clearness with which I had noted the
eyes and the careworn look proved it ; for my eyesight is now unable to distinguish
such details of features at the distance of the pew in question. " It is interesting^ in this
connection to remark thatMr. Newnham, for the larger part of his life, enjoyed particularly
good sight ; while another correspondent, who occasionally sees subjective phantoms,
and who has been short-sighted from birth, says, " I experience the same difficulty
in discerning the unreal that I do when viewing real objects ; unless the persons come
near, I cannot clearly distinguish their features."

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 73

one knows are seen in places where it is very natural that they should
be, one often accepts a very slight and general glance as a sufficient
ground of recognition ; and it is easy afterwards to mistake the
inference that one drew from this glance for actual ocular observation.
But, on the other hand, Mr. Schofield spoke to the figure, and it did
not answer him ; which would at any rate be unlikely conduct on the
part of a real person.

§ 4. The next type that presents itself is different from any that
has yet been mentioned. We have encountered several cases, which
there seemed strong grounds for considering telepathic, where
the phantasmal form was not recognised ; and we have seen that
on the theory that the telepathic impulse may take place on various
levels, or even below any level, of consciousness, and maybe projected
into sensory form by the percipient with various degrees of distinct-
ness, this lack of recognition is not surprising. But all the visual
cases so far examined have presented a human appearance : the
hallucination has been developed at any rate up to that point. It
will be remembered, however, that there have been instances where the
human appearances developed out of something of a formless kind,
which gradually assumed outline and detail (Chap. XII., § 3) ; and this
might naturally lead us to expect that other cases might occur of a
more rudimentary type — hallucinations, as we might say, of arrested
development, and not suggestive or but faintly suggestive of any
human likeness. Instances of the undeveloped type are met with
among the purely subjective hallucinations of the sane ; but they
are very rare in comparison with the hallucinations which represent a
definite figure ; l it need not, therefore, surprise us to find that the
analogous group, which there are grounds for regarding as very pos-
sibly telepathic, is a small one. Physiologically, we might com-
pare these undeveloped flashes of hallucination to a motor effect

1 In my collection of purely subjective hallucinations of the sane, the only visual
examples that I find of a quite rudimentary type are a star, and two or three appear-
ances of shapeless cloudy masses ; to which I might add a few of the "collective " cases in
Chap, xviii., § 5. But since this chapter was written, M. M^rillier's paper, above cited,
has supplied me with a case eminently in point. After describing some most distinct and
complete hallucinations from which he suffered at one period of his life, he continues : —
" Depuis lors, je n'ai plus eu d'hallucinations tres nettes ; parfois encore je vois des lueurs,
j'entends des craquements, des bruissements, je sens en moi ce sentiment d'attente anxieuse
qui precede d'ordinaire 1'apparition d'une hallucination ; mais rien ne parait : 1'hallucina.-
tion est re\luite avant m6me qu'elle ait eu le temps de se produire." This seems exactly to*
illustrate " arrested development. " See also case 311 below, where a hallucination of
light develops into a human form ; a converse case, No. 553, where a developed halluci-
nation passes into a mere impression of light ; case 332 where it seems probable that what
appeared to one percipient as a complete and recognised figure appeared to another as a
formless luminous cloud ; and case 346 where what appeared to one percipient as a com-
plete figure, which touched him, appeared to another as a misty shadow.

74 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

which, instead of taking the complex form of automatic writing, is
limited to a single start or twitch. The experiments in Chap. II.,
§ 13, seemed to indicate that the sequel of a telepathic impulse
might be a single tremor or vibration, sent down to the motor centre
from the higher tracts of the brain ; just so may we suppose the
speech-centre to have been stimulated in the case of Mrs. K.'s cry
(Vol. I., p. 398) ; and in the rudimentary hallucinations the stimula-
tion of the sensory centre may be conceived as of the same simple and
explosive sort.

The following case stands in an intermediate position, as there
was a suggestion, but not exactly a representation, of human form.
The account is from a witness whom we believe to have stated the
facts correctly. She is the wife of an Inspector on the G.N. Railway,
and resides at 4, Taylor's Cottages, London Road, Nottingham.

"April 23rd, 1883.

(251) " We received a letter a few days since, asking me to give you
the account of our dear little girl's death, which took place on the 17th of
May, 1879. I beg to state it is as fresh on my mind as if it only
occurred a few days ago. The morning was very bright, and I think
the sun shone more bright than I had ever seen it before. The child was
four years and five months old, and a very fine girl. A few minutes after
1 1 she came running into the kitchen and said to me, ' Mother, may I
go and play ? ' I said, ' Yes.' She then went out. Soon after I spoke
to her, I went and fetched a pail of water from the bedroom. As I was
walking across the yard, the child came in front of me like a bright
shadow,1, and I stopped quite still and looked at her, and turned my head
to the right, and saw her pass away. I emptied my water, and was coming
in. My husband's brother, who was staying with us, called to me, and
said, ' Fanny have got runned over.' I then came through the house
and went just across the road, and found her. She was knocked down
by the horse's feet, and the wheel of a baker's cart had broken the brain
at the back of her neck. She only breathed a few minutes in my arms.

" This is just as the sad accident occurred. I have been looking for
the piece of paper with it in, but I cannot find it. " ANNE E. WEIGHT."

The accident occurred at Derby. The Derby and Chesterfield Reporter
gives a full account of it, which completely corresponds with the above.

[In a conversation with Mr. and Mrs. H. Sidgwick on December 16th,
1883, Mrs. Wright explained that the apparition was "like a flash of
lightning in the form of a child's shadow." It could not have been a
real child ; it was " not the least like one," nor did she recognise in
it the image of any particular child ; but it gave her a kind of shock
and made her think, " I wonder where those children are." It lasted
long enough for her to gaze steadily at it — " about half a minute "-
and "moved away to the right, with her eyes upon it," and so dis-

1 Cf. Case 491, where a "shadowy light" seems to have developed into more definite
form.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 75

appeared. Not more than a quarter or three-quarters of a minute
passed before her brother-in-law called to her. It must have been 5 or 7
minutes since the child had gone to play, when the accident happened.
Mrs. Wright afterwards learnt from an eye-witness what the child
had been doing out in the road for some minutes previously to the
accident. While holding the dying child in her arms, she said to the
people standing by, " This is her death-blow. I saw her shadow in the
yard." She has had no hallucination of vision on any other occasion.]

It is open to doubt, of course, whether the experience here was of a
sufficiently marked kind to have remained in the percipient's mind,
had no accident occurred. But the description of the phantasm
appears at any rate to point to something more than a mere illusion
caused by the sunlight ; nor is it of a sort that seems specially likely
to have been unconsciously invented or exaggerated after the event.

The next two cases are of a much more rudimentary type. The
narrator of the first is the Rev. James Went, M.A., of Southlea,
Knighton, Leicester, Headmaster of the Leicester Grammar School.

" December 21st, 1885.

(252) " In the year 1870, 1 held an assistant-mastership in a large gram-
mar school in the Midland counties. At the beginning of one of the school
terms a boy had come to the town to reside with his uncle, for the sake of
attending the school. He was a quiet, thoughtful-looking boy, and he and
I were, I think, attracted to each other. A short time after he had come
to the school, he was taken ill during school hours. Seeing that he was in
pain I suggested that he should go home, and he did so. He was absent
for perhaps three or four days, and, I think, meantime I made inquiries of
his cousin, who also attended the school, and got the impression that he
was not seriously ill. At all events, I had no idea that he was in any
danger, nor, indeed, as I ascertained afterwards, had his friends. One
evening I was sitting in my drawing-room reading, my wife being in the
dining room behind, when I became aware of a vague presence within a few
feet of me. It assumed no shape, and was nothing more than an indefin-
able dark appearance as of massed and disordered drapery, though there
was no rustling. Slight as it was, however, I was quite conscious of it,
and I can recall it at this distance of time. It made me feel a little
uncomfortable, and I put down my book and joined my wife in the next
room. The discomfort passed away at once, and I thought no more of it.
In the course of an hour, however, I received a note which informed me
that my pupil had died at about the same time, so far as I could make
out, that I had been conscious of this appearance. I was, of course, at
once reminded of it, and took some little trouble to ascertain the time.
When I received the note informing me of his death I mentioned the
incident to my wife, and she at the present time remembers my doing so. *•

" I give the narrative for what it is worth. It is very vague, but I
have endeavoured not to overstate the incident. " JAMES WENT."

In answer to an inquiry, Mr. Went says : — " I have never on any other
occasion had any hallucination of the senses."

76 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

Mrs. Went writes as follows on Dec. 29, 1885 : —

" I remember well my husband mentioning to me, directly after he
heard of the boy's death, a queer sensation that he had experienced an
hour previously that evening, and his belief that he had seen something
which he could not describe. " FRANCES J. WENT."

The stage of development here seems just on a par with that out
of which the appearances in cases 193, 194, and 315 took definite shape.

The next case is from the late Rev. Stephen H. Saxby, of Mount
Elton, Clevedon, who was present when the incident occurred.

« 1883.

(253) "About the year 1841, I was in a room with my father in our
house in the Isle of Wight, when he exclaimed, 'Good God, what is that?'
starting up as he spoke, and apparently looking at something. He then
turned to me and said that he had seen a ball of light pass through the
room, and added, ' Depend upon it, Nurse Simonds is dead.' This was an
old servant in London, to whom he had been sending money, in illness.
In course of post came information that she passed away at the very time
in question. " S. H. S."

[The exact date of death cannot be traced, the name being a common one.]

It is superfluous to remark that such an incident as this would
deserve no attention if it stood alone ; for therein it only resembles
almost any example of coincidence that can be adduced. But in the
case of the rudimentary visual phantasms, the evidential weakness
extends to the whole class, which is far too small to carry any
conviction, or to be even worth presenting on its own account ; and
to many, I am aware, the very mention of it will seem rather to
weaken than to strengthen my argument. But it is only, I think,
the vague habit of conceiving death-apparitions as objective presences
instead of as hallucinations, that makes a " ball of light " appear so
much more bizarre and improbable a manifestation than the
semblance of the distant person's form. If the percipient has never
on any other occasion had an experience of the kind, it seems
unreasonable to leave the fact of the coincidence out of account,
merely because the hallucination is of a rare type ; and seeing that
this small rudimentary class is backed by the far larger and
more convincing class of recognised phantasms, we may admit the
presumption thus raised that the smaller group, like the larger, is
telepathic, while still admitting that the smaller group adds no ap-
preciable weight of its own to the cumulative proof of telepathy.
The same remarks apply to the rudimentary auditory cases, some of
which will be given in the next chapter — though to these the con-
ception of arrested development is less applicable.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT 77

§ 5. The types that next claim notice are peculiar in that they
involve no coincidence with any ostensibly abnormal condition of the
agent. Evidence that certain hallucinations are telepathic, and not
purely subjective, in origin may be afforded by coincidences of a
different sort. Thus, a person may have a hallucination representing
a friend in some costume in which he has never seen him or imagined
him, but which proves to have been actually worn by him at the time.
Or again, several persons, at different times, may have had a
hallucination representing the same person, though that person
was apparently experiencing nothing unusual on any of the occasions
when his form was thus seen. Clearly it would be difficult to regard
a repetition of this sort as accidental. It being comparatively a rare
event for a sane and healthy person to see the form of an absent
person at all, that two or more sane and healthy persons at different
times should see the form of the same absent person, is, on the theory
of chances, so unlikely as to suggest a specific faculty on the absent
person's part for promulgating telepathic impulses.

This latter type is important from its bearing on the question
whether the peculiarity of organisation which conduces to telepathic
transferences belongs rather to the percipient or to the agent, or (as
experiment would lead us to suppose) in some measure to both. To
decide this question we should naturally ask which happens the more
frequently — that the same percipient, or that the same agent, is con-
cerned in several telepathic incidents. Now of repetitions to the same
percipient we have several examples ;x but that the same agent should
figure repeatedly is made unlikely by the very nature of the ordinary
type of case, which implies (over and above any natural peculiarity of
organisation) an exceptional crisis — indeed, more often than not the
crisis of death, through which no one can pass more than once. The
only chance for a dying agent to show a special faculty for originating
telepathic impressions is by impressing several persons ; and cases
of simultaneous or collective percipience, which may possibly be so

1 The evidence for one instance may of course be better than for another or others
which may have fallen to the experience of the same percipient ; but the following cases
seem at any rate worth considering in respect of this feature of repetition : — Nos. 21, 38,
56, and 184 ; 41 and 477 ; 44 and 116 ; 53, with the preceding incidents ; 69 ; 73 and 103 ;
74 and 423 ; 77 and 263 ; 80 and 204 ; 86, 479 and 480 ; 111, 161 and 464 ; 126 and 201 ;
129, 164 and 551 ; 136 and 137 ; 140 and 642 ; 167 and 315 ; 191 and 280 ; 198 and 274" j.
279 ; 311, 367 and 693 ; 370 and 665 ; 408, 553, 554 and 650 ; 411 and 463 ; 502 ; 513 ; 514
and 515 ; 559 and 560 ; the case on p. 355 ; and perhaps Nos. 99, 392, 619, 625, 692. See
also the account which Thomas Wright, of Birkenshaw (the champion of the Wesleyans
in the North of England), gives of his aunt's experiences (Autobiography pp. 5-7). Mrs.
Newnham affords another instance, but with her the agent has always been her husband
(Vol i., pp. 63-70, and cases 18 and 35). Compare in this respect cases 90 and 700 ; and
also case 55.

78 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

explicable, will be considered later (in Chap. XVIII.). Meanwhile the
cases where telepathic impressions seem now and again to be thrown
off at haphazard, and independently of death or any other crisis, are
theoretically of at least equal interest. For they tend to confirm what
experiment would lead us to suppose, that agency as well as
percipience depends on specific conditions as yet unknown ; and this
dependence on peculiarity of constitution in two people would go far to
account for an otherwise puzzling fact — the rarity, in comparison with
the number of deaths and crises that take place, of spontaneous
telepathic incidents connected with them.

Of the class of repeated hallucinations representing the same
person, we have about five presentable records.1 Most of the inci-
dents therein described seem to illustrate what may be called purely
casual agency ; but in a few of them the agent's state was more or
less abnormal — which is so far of course in favour of a telepathic
explanation of the phenomena. The first account is from Mrs.
Hawkins, qf Beyton Rectory, Bury St. Edmunds.

" March 25th, 1885.

(254) " I send you my cousins' accounts of my apparition.

" I have also sent you the account of my next appearance, which
unfortunately cannot now be related by the eye-witness.

" Again, a third time one of my little sisters reported that she had seen
me on the stairs, when I was seven miles off — but she might so easily have
been mistaken that I have never put any faith in that appearance. Then
I was about 20.

" For many years after that these appearances seem to have entirely
ceased, but in the autumn of 1877 I was seen in this house by my
eldest son, then aged 27, who may, I hope, give you his own account
of it. " LUCY HAWKINS."

Mrs. Hawkins prefaces her cousins' accounts thus : —

" The event described in the enclosed accounts took place at Cherington,
near Shipston-on-Stour, in Warwickshire, the residence of my uncle, Mr.
William Dickins, who was for many years chairman of Quarter Sessions in

1 1 am excluding from the list a case received from Miss E. D. Jackson, of Strangeways,
Manchester, where she and her hostess, on separate occasions, saw the figure of a maid-
servant who was not really present ; partly because the experiences both took place when
the percipient was in bed in the morning, which we have seen to be a condition favour-
able to purely subjective hallucinations ; partly because the sight of a person who is daily
before the eyes is a common form for such hallucinations to take. (See Vol. i., p. 505.)

None of the hitherto published cases of the repeated appearance of the same person's
"double" rest on good traceable authority. The case of Mdlle. Sag^e, published in Mr.
Dale Owen's Footfalls (p. 348), in 1863, was withdrawn in a later edition, as second-hand
and not well substantiated. Some instances are recorded in connection with witchcraft —
e.g., in Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World (Boston, 1693), pp. 106-112 ; but here
the idea of the person whose form appeared was present as a permanent source of appre-
hension in the minds of all the percipients.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT, 79

the county. The ladies who saw the appearance are two of his daughters,
one of them a little older than myself, the other 3 or 4 years younger.
I was then just 17.

" The only mistake that I can discover in either of the accounts is that
Mrs. Malcolm says I had been hiding with her ' brother,' whereas I had
really been all the time with her sister, Miss Lucy Dickins — a fact of no
importance except that she (Miss D.) might (if necessary) bear witness
that I had really been with her all the time in the washhouse, and so could
not have been near where I was seen.

" I remember we were all somewhat awed by what had happened,
and that it broke up our game. I myself quite thought it was a
warning of speedy death ; but as I was not a nervous or excitable girl,
it did not make me anxious or unhappy, and in course of time the
impression passed off.

Writing to Mrs. Hawkins in September, 1884, Miss Dickins said : —

" Georgie [Mrs. Malcolm] is coming here on Friday, and I propose then
to show her your letters, and Mr. Gurney's, and that we should each
write our impressions of what we saw independently, and see how far
they agree, and we will send the result to you. It is all very fresh
in my memory, and I can at this moment conjure you up in my mind's
eye, as you appeared under that tree and disappeared in the yard. I even
recollect distinctly the dress you wore, a sort of brown and white, rather
large check, such as was in fashion then, and is now, but was in abeyance
in the intermediate years."

Shortly afterwards Miss Dickins wrote : —

" Cherington, Shipston-on-Stour.

"September 29th, 1884.

" I send the two accounts which Georgie and I wrote about your
apparition. We wrote them independently, and so I think they are
wonderfully good evidence, as they tally to almost every particular, except
the little fact that I thought she joined me in searching the yard
for you, and she thinks not — but that has nothing to do with the main
fact of the story, our entire belief that we saw you in the body."

"In the autumn of 1845, we were a large party of young ones staying
in the house, and on one occasion were playing at a species of hide-and-
seek, in which we were allowed to move from one hiding-place to another,
until caught by the opposite side. At the back of the house there was a
small fold-yard opening on one side into the orchard, on the other into the
stableyard, and there were other buildings to the left. I came round the
corner of these buildings, and saw my cousin standing under some trees
about 20 yards from me, and I distinctly saw her face ; my sister, who at
the moment appeared on the other side, also saw her and shouted to me to
give chase. My cousin ran between us in the direction of the fold-yard,
and when she reached the door we were both close behind her and followed
instantly, but she had entirely disappeared, though scarcely a second had
elapsed. We looked at one another in amazement, and searched every
corner of the yard in vain ; and when found some little time afterwards,
she assured us that she had never been on that side of the house at all, or
anywhere near the spot, but had remained hidden in the same place until
discovered by one of the enemy. " S. F. D."

80 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

" I well remember the incident of your c fetch ' appearing to us. I
believe I wrote down the details at the time, but do not know what has
become of that record, so must trust to my memory to recall the circum-
stances, and do not fear its [not] being faithful though nearly 40 years
have passed.

" We were playing our favourite game of Golowain, which consisted in
dividing into sides at hide-and-seek, the party hiding having the privilege
of moving on from place to place until they reached the ' Home,' unless
meanwhile caught by the pursuing party.

" As I stood towards the end of the game, as a seeker, in the orchard,
I saw you, who belonged to the opposite party, stealing toward me. As
your dress was the same as your sister's, and there was the possibility of
my mistaking you for her, who was on my side, I shouted her name, and
she answered me from the opposite side of the wood. I then gave chase,
and you turned, and looked at me laughing, and I saw your face distinctly.
But at the same instant, Nina, also my friend, but your enemy, appeared
round some corner, and being still nearer to you than I was, I left the
glory of your capture to her. She was close upon you as you fled into a
cow-yard. I was so sure your fate was sealed that I followed more
slowly, and hearing the bell ring, that, according to the rules of our game,
recalled us to the ' Home,' I went on there, to find Nina upbraiding you
for having so mysteriously escaped her in this cow-yard.

" In astonishment you said you never had been near the place. Of
course I supported my little sister in her assertion; whilst our brother
supported you, saying he had been hiding with you. and that, being tired,
you had both remained hidden in one place until the bell warned you that
the game was over — that place being a washhouse in a distinct part of the
premises from the cow or fold-yard, into which we believed we had chased
you.

"G. M. (ne'e Dickins)."

In answer to inquiries, both Miss Dickins and Mrs. Malcolm say that
they have never had any other experience of visual hallucination.

Mrs. Hawkins continues : —

" The second appearance of my ' double ' was in the spring (February
or March) of 1847, at Leigh Rectory, in Essex, my father, the Rev. Robert
Eden (now Primus of Scotland), being rector of the parish.

" The person who saw it was the nurserymaid. I am not quite sure of
her name ; but if, as I think, she was a certain ' Caroline,' she has been
dead many years, therefore I can only give you my own very vivid recol-
lections of her story, told with tears of agitation.

" But first I should mention that I had the mumps at that time, and
was going about with my head tied up, and the only other person in the
house who had it was my little brother, nearly 10 years younger than
myself, who could not possibly be mistaken for me.

" On the first floor of Leigh Rectory there is a passage which runs the
length of the house, terminated at one end by the door of a room that was
then the nursery. One morning, about 10.30, ' Caroline ' came out of the
nursery, and, walking along the passage, had to pass a doorway opening on
to the stairs which led down into the front hall. As she passed, she glanced
down, and saw me (conspicuous by the white handkerchief round my head,

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 81

and facing her) come out of the drawing-room door and walk across the
corner of the hall to the library. She proceeded along the passage, and,
coming to the foot of the attic stairs, met our maid, who said to her, ' Do
you know where Miss Eden is ? I want to go to her room.' ' Oh yes,'
answered Caroline, ' I just saw her go into the library. So they came
together up to my room, which was one of the attics, and found me sitting
there, where I had been for at least half an hour, writing a letter. After
a moment's pause of astonishment, they fled, though I called to them to
come in. When I went downstairs a few minutes afterwards, and reached
the passage, I saw in the nursery a group of maids, all looking so
perturbed that, instead of proceeding down the front stairs, I went on to
the nursery and asked what was the matter. But as no one answered,
and I saw the nurserymaid was crying, I thought they had been quarrel-
ling, and went away, quite unconscious that it was on my account they
were so disturbed. " LUCY HAWKINS."

The following account is from Mrs. Hawkins' son : —

"June 20th, 1885.

"In the autumn of 1877, I was living at my father's house, Beyton
Rectory, Bury St. Edmunds. The household consisted of my father,
mother, three sisters, and three maid servants. One moonlight night I
was sleeping in my room, and had been asleep some hours, when I was
awakened by hearing a noise close to my head, like the chinking of money.
My waking idea, therefore, was that a man was trying to take my money
out of my trousers pocket, which lay on a chair close to the head of my
bed. On opening my eyes, I was astonished to see a woman, and I well
remember thinking with sorrow that it must be one of our servants who
was trying to take my money. I mention these two thoughts to show
that I was not thinking in the slightest degree of my mother. When my
eyes had become more accustomed to the light, I was more than ever
surprised to see that it was my mother? dressed in a peculiar silver-grey
dress, which she had originally got for a fancy ball. She was standing
with both hands stretched out in front of her as if feeling her way ; and
in that manner moved slowly away from me, passing in front of the
dressing-table, which stood in front of the curtained window, through
which the moon threw a certain amount of light. Of course, my idea all
this time was that she was walking in her sleep. On getting beyond the
table she was lost to my sight in the darkness. I then sat up in bed,
listening ; but hearing nothing, and, on peering through the darkness, saw
that the door, which was at the foot of my bed, and to get to which she
would have had to pass in front of the light, was still shut. I then
jumped out of bed, struck a light, and instead of finding my mother at the
far end of the room, as I expected, found the room empty. I then for
the first time supposed that it was an ' appearance,' and greatly dreaded
that it signified her death.

"I might add that I had, at that time, quite forgotten that my
mother had ever appeared to any one before, her last appearance having ,
been about the year 1847, three years before I was born.

"EDWARD HAWKINS."

1 This is an excellent instance of delayed recognition ; cf. case 249 above, and Chap,
xii., §§ 2 and 3.

VOL. II. O

82 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

In answer to inquiries, Mr. E. Hawkins says : — " I can assure you that
neither before nor since that time have I ever had any experience of
the sort."

The second account is from the Rev. T. L. Williams, Vicar of

Porthleven, near Helston.

"August 1st, 1884.

(255) " Some years ago (I cannot give you any date, but you may rely
on the facts), on one occasion when I was absent from home, my wife awoke
one morning, and to her surprise and alarm saw my etiJwXov standing by
the bedside looking at her. In her fright she covered her face with the
bedclothes, and when she ventured to look again the appearance was gone.
On another occasion, when I was not absent from home, my wife went
one evening to week-day evensong, and on getting to the churchyard gate,
which is about 40 yards or so from the church door, she saw me, as she
supposed, coming from the church in surplice and stole. I came a little
way, she says, and turned round the corner of the building, when she lost
sight of me. The idea suggested to her mind was that I was coming out
of the church to meet a funeral at the gate. I was at the time in church
in my place in the choir, where she was much surprised to see me when
she entered the building. I have often endeavoured to shake my wife's
belief in the reality of her having seen what she thinks she saw. In the
former case I have told her, ' You were only half awake and perhaps
dreaming.' But she always confidently asserts that she was broad awake,
and is quite certain that she saw me. In the latter case she is equally
confident.

"My daughter also has often told me, and now repeats the story,
that one day, when living at home before her marriage, she was passing
my study door which was ajar, and looked in to see if I was there.
She saw me sitting in my chair, and as she caught sight of me I stretched
out my arms, and drew my hands across my eyes, a familiar gesture of
mine, it appears. I was not in the house at the time, but out in the
village. This happened many years ago, but my wife remembers that my
daughter mentioned the circumstance to her at the time.

" Now nothing whatever occurred at or about the times of these
appearances to give any meaning to them. I was not ill, nor had anything
unusual happened to me. I cannot pretend to offer any explanation, but
simply state the facts as told me by persons on whose words I can depend.

" There is one other thing which I may as well mention. A good
many years ago there was a very devout young woman living in my parish,
who used to spend much of her spare time in church in meditation and
prayer. She used to assert that she frequently saw me standing at the
altar, when I was certainly not there in the body. At first she was
alarmed, but after seeing the appearance again and again she ceased to
feel anything of terror. She is now a Sister of Mercy at Honolulu.

" THOMAS LOCKYER WILLIAMS."

[The circumstances, and the frequency, of this third percipient's
experiences decidedly favour the view that they were merely subjective.]

Mrs. Williams writes : —

"June 20th, 1885.

"As requested, I write to tell you what I saw on two occasions. I

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 83

am sorry that I am unable to give you the dates, even approximately, as
many years have passed since I had the experiences referred to. On one
occasion my husband was absent in Somersetshire, and on waking one
morning I distinctly saw him standing by my bedside. I was much
alarmed, and instinctively covered my face with the bedclothes. My
friends have often ti'ied to persuade me that I was not broad awake,
but I am quite certain that I was, and that I really saw my husband's
appearance.

" The other occasion was on a certain evening I was going to church,
and on getting to the churchyard gate, which is about 20 yards from the
door of the church, I saw my husband come out of the church in his
surplice, walk a little way towards me, and then turn off round the
church. I thought nothing of it until on entering the church I was
startled at seeing him in his place in the choir, about to conduct the
service. It was then broad daylight, and I am quite sure that I saw the
appearance. Nothing whatever occurred after either of these appearances,
and, of course, I can in no way account for them.

" EMMA WILLIAMS."

In reply to the question whether his wife or daughter had ever
experienced any other hallucination of the senses, Mr. Williams replies
confidently in the negative.

The following account is from Miss Hopkinson, of 37, Woburn
Place, W.C. It will be seen that in this case and the next, the
evidence is not first-hand from any of the percipients ; nor are the
cases strictly covered by the rule (Vol. I., p. 148) which admits to the
body of this work the evidence of persons to whom the percipient's
experience has been described before the arrival of news of the agent's
exceptional condition.1 But that there was here no such exceptional
condition does not in any way increase the probability that the
narrator has imagined that she was informed of experiences of which
in fact she was not informed. And the news that some one has
had a waking vision of oneself being calculated to make rather a
special impression on the mind and memory, the agent in these
instances is at any rate in a different position from an ordinary

second-hand witness.

" February 20th, 1886.

(256) "In the course of my life I have been accused four times of
appearing to people ; neither can I account for those supposed visits. "

Asked to give details, and to obtain corroboration, Miss Hopkinson
replied : —

" It would be really quite excusable if you did not believe one word-
of my statements. I can get you no further information to support
them. In the first instance of my supposed appearance, which happened

1 Miss Hopkinson's case, however, as regards one incident in it — the third — is not even
an apparent exception to the rule,

VOL. II. 0 2

84 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

some years ago, the young lady died very shortly afterwards. Her
parents, too, are also dead. In the second, I gave the • gentleman on
whom I called to understand that he had made a mistake — I could not
ask him about it now. In the third, though the lady only a day or two
ago repeated to me her original account of my visit to her, she totally
declined writing it out for me, or letting me use her name, on the idea,
which I find very common, that these sort of things are irreligious. The
fourth time rather differed from the others ; but the young lady in that
case died soon after. I am conscious that in all these cases I was thinking
intensely of the individuals."

The following are the fuller details : —

" Case 1 occurred many years ago. A young lady, sleeping in a house
next door to the one I was in, declared that I visited her during the night
when she was lying awake, and that I performed some slight service for
her. She was so positive in her statements that my denial was not be-
lieved by those around her. I was perfectly certain I had never left my
room, nor could I have done so without its being known. I will not
draw on my memory for further particulars ; I might be wrong after so
long a time.

" Case 2. Seven years ago. I had gone into the City (a place I
always avoid) on a small matter of business connected with a relative of
mine, and I was very anxious he should know nothing about it ; my
thoughts therefore were occupied by him. I was almost startled from my
reverie by the clock of Bow Church striking 3. In the evening I saw my
relative, and the first thing he said was, ' L., where did you go to-day ? I
saw you come in to my place, but you passed my office and I don't know
what became of you.' I said, 'At what time were you ridiculous enough
to think I should call upon you?' 'As the clock struck 3,' he re-
plied. I turned the subject — nor have I ever reverted to it since. This
gentleman knew my dress and general appearance most intimately. Of
course, I was not likely to visit him except on business, and by
appointment.

" Case 3. About 6 years ago. I was staying in a country town 100 miles
from London, at a busy, matter-of-fact home, with bright young people.
One morning I came down to breakfast oppressed with a sensation I
could not understand nor shake off. It resolved itself towards the after-
noon in an absorbing thought of a relative in London, and I then wrote
to ask her what she was doing. But a letter from her crossed mine, to
ask me the same question. When I next saw her she told me what only
last week she exactly repeated again : she was sitting quietly working,
when the door opened, and I walked in, looking as usual ; and though she
believed I was miles away, she concluded I had come back, and did not
realise to the contrary till I turned and walked out of the room.

" Case 4. Four years ago. A young lady asserted I stood at the
bottom of her bed (she was not well at the time) and told her distinctly to
get up and dress herself, and that I thought her well enough to do so.
She obeyed. I told her she was quite mistaken ; I had done nothing of
the sort. She evidently thought I was denying the fact for some reason.
I was about 20 minutes' walk from this young lady's room at the time.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 85

She was perfectly clear in her statement ; and I would not argue the
point with her; Her illness was not in the least mental.

" LOUISA HOPKINSON."

The next account is from Mrs. Stone, of Shute Haye, Walditch,
Bridport.

" 1883.

(257) " On three occasions, each time by different persons, I have been
seen when not present in the body. The first instance that I was thus seen
was by my sister-in-law, who was sitting up with me, the night after the
birth of my first child. She looked towards the bed where I was sleeping,
and distinctly saw me and my double ; the first my natural body, the
second spiritualised and fainter ; several times she shut her eyes, but on
opening them there was still the same appearance, and the vision only
faded away after some little time. She thought it a sign of my death. I
did not hear of it for many months.

" The second instance was by my niece ; she was staying with us at
Dorchester. It was rather early on a spring morning ; she opened her
bedroom door, and saw me ascending the flight of steps opposite her room,
fully dressed in the mourning black gown, white collar, and cap, which I
was then wearing for my mother-in-law. She did not speak, but saw me,
as she thought, go into the nursery. At breakfast she said to her uncle,
' My aunt was up early this morning, I saw her go into the nursery.'
' Oh ! no, Jane,' my husband answered, ' she was not very well, and is
going to have her breakfast before coming down.'

" The third instance was the most remarkable. We had a small house
at Weymouth, where we occasionally went for the sea. A Mrs. Samways
waited on us when there, and took care of the house in our absence ;
she was a nice quiet woman, thoroughly trustworthy, the aunt of my
dear old servant Kitty Balston, then living with us at Dorchester. She
had written to her aunt the day before the vision occurred, telling her of
the birth of my youngest child, and that I was going on well. The next
night Mrs. Samways went to a meeting-house, near Clarence Buildings ;
she was a Baptist. Before leaving, she locked an inner door leading into
a small courtyard behind the house, and the street-door after her, carrying
both keys in her pocket. On her return, unlocking the street-door, she
perceived a light at the end of the passage, and on going nearer saw, as
she thought, the yard-door open. The light showed the yard and every-
thing in it, but in the midst she clearly recognised me, in white garments,
looking very pale and worn. She was terribly frightened, rushed into a
neighbour's house (Captain Court's), and dropped in the passage. After
recovering, Captain Court went with her into the house, which was exactly
as she had left it, and the yard-door securely locked. I was taken very
faint about the same time, and lingered for many weeks, hovering between
life and death."1

1 Taken in connection with these instances, the following experience of Mrs. Stone's
own is of considerable interest. (See Vol. i., p. 555, note.)

" When about 9 or 10 years old I was sent to a school in Dorchester as a day boarder ;
it was here my first curious experience occurred that I can clearly remember. I was in an
upper room in the school, standing with some others, in a class opposite our teacher, Miss
Mary Lock ; suddenly I found myself by her side, and looking towards the class saw
myself distinctly — a slim, pale girl, in a white frock and pinafore. I felt a strong anxiety

86 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

Professor Sidgwick has visited Mrs. Stone, and after thoroughly
questioning her on her narrative, he writes (September 23rd, 1884) : —
" She certainly understands thoroughly the importance of accuracy. She
said she had heard of her apparition direct from the seers, in the two first
cases mentioned. She had never heard of her sister-in-law having had any
other hallucination before this time (1833) or afterwards, until very
lately, when she has had an apparition of a dead person. She is old, and
Mrs. Stone is unwilling to trouble her on the matter. Nor does she think
that her niece, Jane Studley (who is dead), ever had any other hallucina-
tion. As regards the third instance, Mrs. Stone only heard it after her
recovery, from Kitty Balston, whose account — as repeated by Mrs.
Stone — was that Mrs. Stone was taken ill in the evening, or rather
just before the evening, and was quite unconscious at the time when she
was seen by Mrs. Sam ways."

[In the last of Mrs. Stone's cases, we should naturally conclude that
the appearance, if telepathic, was connected with her illness ; but the
other two appearances seem to have been purely casual. Possibly, how-
ever, the first may have been due to her sister-in-law's failing to focus the
two eyes together, which is a common infirmity in some cases of debility ;
but we should expect a person who suffered in this way to be aware that
she was in the habit of seeing objects double.]

The remaining account is from Mr. Gorham Blake,1 mining
engineer, now residing at Loudsville, White Co., Georgia, U.S.A.,
and was sent to Professor Barrett in the summer of 1884. Mr. Blake
begins with an account of long-continued success in alleviating pain
by hypnotic processes — a success which he attributes in great measure
to abstinence from stimulants, and to the fact that his profession has
necessitated much active exercise in the open air. He then narrates
the following cases, in all of which (except the first, where the per-
cipient's experience was not sensory in character) the agency, if
such it was, seems to have been purely casual.

(258) " In 1869, 1 crossed the great Humboldt (40 mile) desert, in the
State of Nevada, for the sixth time, alone, in the saddle ; by an accident
my horse, a wild mustang, escaped, leaving me at 10 a.m. on foot in that
ankle-deep alkali sand, under the blazing July sun, and twenty miles from
a drop of water, except that in my saddle-bags on my horse. Hours were
spent in the chase for my horse. Then I tried to shoot him, but he
escaped, leaving me exhausted, sunstruck, dizzy, and finally helplessly
dying on the hot shadeless alkali, about noon. I passed the agony of
death by thirst, heat, and exhaustion, and became insensible. It was rarely

to get back, as it were, but it seemed a violent and painful effort, almost struggle, when
accomplished. I was much frightened, but did not mention it till many years after."

I may mention that Mrs. Stone's daughter has had a similar experience ; so that here
is perhaps another example of hereditary tendency.

1 In the case of foreign informants whose personal acquaintance we have been unable
to make, we have taken pains to assure ourselves as to their character and position . I
mention this because the absence of testimonials has led some persons to imagine that we
accept accounts without criticism or inquiry.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 87

a traveller passed that way in that season, the track marked only by the
bones of dead animals. A chance traveller came, saw my horse, and found
me insensible, laid me in the shade of his waggon, and bathed me with
water and vinegar until I carne back to life. He lassoed my horse, and
at sundown I mounted and rode to the settlements. Between 2.30 and 3
o'clock that afternoon one of my sensitive lady friends in Boston, Massa-
chusetts (2,600 miles distant), while talking with her husband, suddenly
threw up her hands and said, l Mr. Blake is dead,' and could not be
reconciled to the contrary. She persuaded her husband to visit my father
in the same city, and learn where I was, &c. Two years after (in 1871)
I visited the friends, and was immediately asked, ' Where were you two
years ago, the last week in July 1 ' On comparing notes, and allowing for
the difference in time, we concluded that at the time I became insensible
in the desert my lady friend received the intelligence. I know I thought
of the lady and her husband while lying on the sand, as we were long dear
friends."

The percipient in this case, Mrs. Copp, and her husband, are dead.
But I have copied the following extract from a letter (dated Boston,
Dec. 19, 1885) written to Mr. Gorham Blake by Mrs. Dresser, who
was one of their most intimate friends. She says : " It is written
just as I remember Mrs. Copp and the Captain telling us on their side."
Mrs. Dresser's account begins by describing how the friendship between
the Copps and Mr. Blake began, through the latter's care of Captain
Copp in a dangerous illness on board ship.

" In the year 186 — [she is not sure of the date] Mr. B. had not been in
Massachusetts for years. One day Mrs. C. was talking cheerfully with her
sister about trifling matters, and, while walking across the room, holding
a dish with both hands, suddenly the dish and contents were dropped on
the floor, and at the same instant she exclaimed, ' Oh, dear ! B. is dead ! '
Her sister, surprised, said, ' What do you mean 1 ' The answer was, ' I
don't know.' But again, in the same impulsive way, she cried out, ' Oh,
he is dead ! ' She could give no reason why she said this, only that she
was made to do it. This fact impressed her so sadly, and also her
husband when he was told of it, although it was inexplicable, that they
agreed to write down the date, so that they could refer to it should occasion
require. A month afterwards, Captain C. inquired by letter of Mr. B.'s
brother what news had been received from California, but gave no reasons
for this inquiry. ' Yes,' was the reply, ' we have just heard from there ;
and he was in good health.' After this report Captain C. and wife did not
trouble themselves about the above incident.

" It so happened that in that same autumn Mr. B. visited
Massachusetts ; and these friends were among the first seen. After
a mutual interchange of the news which had occurred, Captain C.
happened to remember that curious incident, and inquired at once, ' B.,

what were you doing one day last 1 Were you sick at the

time ?' B. replied, ' No, I was well — nothing was the matter with me.' But
after further inquiry about the time, Mrs. C. consulted the record she had
made of the exact date when the event happened, and then told him of her
peculiar experience," — whereupon Mr. B. narrated his adventure, of which
Mrs. Dresser's version agrees with his own description above.

88 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

[It will be seen that the discrepancies between the two accounts are
very trifling.]

Mr. Blake continues : —

"In the year 1870 I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston,
and had an occasional correspondence with Miss S., an American, then
residing in Europe. I received a letter from her, dated Miirzzuschlag,
August 6th, 1870, in which she says : ' Yesterday I sat alone in my room,
arranging my herbarium, till I was very tired, but there was such a
fascination in the work that I did not seem able to break the spell and
leave it ; but of a sudden someone touched my shoulder with such force
that I immediately turned. You were as plainly to be seen as if in the
body, and I said, " Why, Mr. Blake, are you really here ? " and directed by
you I laid aside my work, and went to the woods. I do not know that
my mind was upon you at the time. I tried to trace the influence to a
concentration of thought upon you, but failed to do it. Whether it was
your letter, your spirit, or my imagination, certainly it was a reality to me.'
I wrote for more particulars. She answered : ' Vienna, Austria, 23rd
October, 1870. In explanation of your coming to me, I heard your voice,
or a voice, speak my name. I turned, and you stood near me. I arose as
if it were a reality, and as I turned again you were gone ; and yet before
I did that it seemed many minutes, for I said, "Is it you ? " and you
replied, " Do you not know me ? " and then you said, " I have come because
you are tired, for you to go to the woods and rest yourself," and, as I told
you, I obeyed the summons, and wished that I could have a tangible
evidence of your companionship.' My diary does not record any dream
or thought of Miss S. on August 5th, 1870. I was at home, and quiet,
and under good conditions for such a visit as that described by Miss S.

"In November, 1883, being in New York, I was in correspondence
with Mrs. G., who was residing in San Francisco. A letter written by
her in November, says : ' Last evening, I saw you distinctly standing by
my side ; you seemed trying to speak, but did not ; you made passes over
me, and I felt your influence plainly ; you were here several minutes, then
disappeared.'

" In another letter she wrote : ' You came to me yesterday afternoon,
in Market Street, at the corner of Stockton Street, you crossed the street
with me. I turned to speak with you, and you were gone. I have seen
you many times in this way.'

"While Mrs. G. has been sitting in a room, sewing and conversing, I,
being in a room 40 feet distant, have willed, or asked, that she come to
me, and she instantly broke off the conversation, came to my room,
knocked, and on my asking her to come in she opened the door, entered,
and seemed a little confused, and said, ' Well, I don't know what I came
in here for.' I have had many instances of this kind."

Mr. Blake has forwarded to us the following letter, written to him by
the Mrs. G. of these last incidents. It will be seen that she is to some
extent predisposed to hallucination, which of course weakens these items
of the evidence.

" San Francisco, Cal.

" March 22nd, 1885.

" DEAR SIR, — You ask me to narrate the circumstances under which

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 89

I saw you, as I wrote you in November, 1883. At that time I was in my
room in San Francisco, Cal., and I saw you distinctly standing by my
side. It was about 1 1 o'clock p.m. You seemed trying to speak, but did
not. You made passes over me, the influence of which I plainly felt.
You remained several minutes, then disappeared.

" Another time you came to me at 12 o'clock, while I was walking on
Market Street, near the corner of Stockton. You crossed the street with
me. I turned to speak with you, but you had disappeared. I have seen
you several times that way, as I have three other persons whom I know to
be alive and in good health. — Yours truly, « MARY A. GORDON."

Mr. Blake continues : —

"On September 28th, 1870, I arrived in New York from Boston
about 7 o'clock a.m., having with me a valise and umbrella. I went to
Dr. P.'s house on Fourth Avenue, rang the bell, and Dr. P. came to the
door, when the following conversation took place : — Blake : ' Good morning.
Can you accommodate me with a room 1 ' Dr. P. : ' Yes, but why didn't
you come in last evening ? ' B. : ' Because I was in Boston last evening.'
P. : ' Why you called here last evening ! ' B. : ' That's impossible, for I
have just arrived on the boat this morning.' P. ; ' I certainly saw you
here last evening. You asked for a room. I asked you to walk in ; you
turned and went away. I thought it strange, and that you must
have misunderstood me. I think my wife saw you too.' Turning to his
wife : ' Did you see Mr. B. last evening ? ' Mrs. P. : ' Yes, he was stand-
ing at the door with a valise in one hand and umbrella in the other ; then
turned and went away. I saw him as I passed through the hall.' 1 B. :
' It's a mistake, or my double, for you can see by my diary that I was in
Boston yesterday, and the business I attended to.'

" I left my baggage in the room and went down town, returning in
the evening. Dr. P. called me into the parlour, where I met an
acquaintance, Dr. C. Dr. P. immediately said, ' Another witness on our
side. Dr. C. saw you down town last evening.' ' Yes,' said Dr. C., ' I
saw you walking along Broadway. You seemed to be in a hurry, and I
was in a hurry to catch the ferry-boat ; I bowed to you, and you returned
it, and hurried on. You had a valise in your right hand and umbrella in
your left hand, and had on a high silk hat, while I have seen you before in
a felt hat, low crowned.' We all concluded it was my double, as at about
the hour they saw me, 6 p.m., I was resting quietly aboard the boat before
she left, and remembered thinking where I should take a room after
getting to New York in the morning ; but I did not remember the
particulars related by Dr. and Mrs. P., or Dr. C. I think I fell into a
doze, or short sleep, while resting, as has been the case several other times
when my double has been seen at a distance from where my body was.

" GORHAM BLAKE."

The first-hand testimony of the percipients is of course much needed,
and I explained to Mr. Gorham Blake the importance of obtaining it..
He has made efforts to do so, but cannot ascertain the present addresses
of the persons concerned. He writes • —

1 It will be observed that this hallucination (if such it was, and not a mere case of
mistaken identity) was collective, as also was the first experience described in case 254.
The discussion of this feature is reserved for Chap, xviii.

90 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

" I enclose the only two papers on the subject that I can now find ;
one from Mrs. Gordon [quoted above], and one from Mrs. Gould, that I
did not before write of. In connection with the latter I will say that I
called at the Light for Thinkers office, Atlanta, Georgia, and saw Mrs.
Gould for the first time. She said she had seen my face before, and told
me as related in enclosed paper. She was not feeling well, and I held her
hands, and placed mine on her head to impart magnetism, and relieved
her. I saw her two or three times while in the city, and received the
enclosed from her after my return home."

The enclosure is as follows : — "April 1885

" One day, while resting, I happened to glance towards a window, in
the fifth story, and, just outside, beheld the spirit1 of my friend, Mr. Blake,
who seemed unable to get into the room ; but, on rising and throwing up
the sash, he appeared to come in and stand by my chair, make passes over
me, magnetising me, and seeming to envelope me with something, just as a
spider does a fly in its web. Before this, in fact some three or four weeks
before I had ever met or seen him, while in a passive mood, I saw his
head clairvoyantly, so distinctly that when he came to my office for the
first time I recognised him as the person. And although he was at these
times alive and well, I saw and recognised his presence as distinctly as
though he had been there in form. « Q j] GOULD "

[The last incident cannot, of course, carry much weight, as the recog-
nition was a completely retrospective act ; and as regards Mrs. Gould's
other experience, the fact that Mr. Blake -had been hypnotising her must
perhaps be regarded as favouring the hypothesis of a purely subjective
hallucination. At the same time, I am not aware of any sufficient evidence
that hypnotic treatment induces a liability to hallucinations representing
the hypnotiser, unless that hallucination has been specially imposed on
the " subject's mind — as any other might be — while in the state of trance.]

Another foreign example is omitted, as we have been unable to
obtain the testimony of the percipients. It is clear that the fact
of the telepathic transference in these casual cases cannot be con-
sidered to be proved ;2 but the mention of the type here may serve to
elicit further instances.

§ 6. Of the other class mentioned, where peculiarities of dress
or aspect afford the only presumption that a hallucination was more
than purely subjective — i.e., was due to an absent agent who, never-
theless, was in a perfectly normal state at the time — the following
examples may serve.3 The first is from Captain A. S. Beaumont, of
1, Crescent Road, South Norwood Park.

1 See p. 48, note.

2 The class, it may be remembered, is the second of the four types of " ambiguous
cases " defined in Vol. i., p. 505.

3 As regards the connection of these appearances with the agent's sub-conscious sense
of his own aspect, I need not repeat the remarks already made (Chap, xii., § 8) in respect
of the far stronger group where there were similar peculiarities plus some exceptional
condition of the a^ent.

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 91

"February 24th, 1885.

(259) "About September, 1873, when my father was living at 57,
Inverness Terrace, 'I was sitting one evening, about 8.30 p.m., in the large
dining-room. At the table, facing me, with their backs to the door, were
seated my mother, sister, and a friend, Mrs. W. Suddenly I seemed to see
my wife bustling in through the door of the back dining-room, which was
in view from my position. She was in a mauve dress. I got up to meet
her, though much astonished, as I believed her to be at Tenby. As I
rose, my mother said, ' Who is that ? ' not (I think) seeing anyone herself,
but seeing that I did. I exclaimed, ' Why, it's Carry,' and advanced to
meet her. As I advanced, the figure disappeared.1 On inquiry, I found
that my wife was spending that evening at a friend's house, in a mauve
dress, which I had most certainly never seen. I had never seen her
dressed in that colour. My wife recollected that at that time she was
talking with some friends about me, much regretting my absence, as there
was going to be dancing, and I had promised to play for them. I had
been unexpectedly detained in London. « ALEX S BEAUMONT "

The following corroboration is from the friend who was present : —

" 11, Grosvenor Street, W.

"March 5th, 1885.

" As far as I can recollect, Captain Beaumont was sitting talking,
when he looked up, and gave a start. His mother asked him what was
the matter. He replied, ' I saw my wife walk across the end of the
room, but that is nothing ; she often appears to people ; her servants have
seen her several times.' The room we were in was a double dining-room,
one end was lit with gas, and the other, where Mrs. Beaumont appeared,
was comparatively dark. No one else saw her except her husband. Mrs.
Beaumont was at the time in Wales, and this happened in Inverness
Terrace, Bayswater. « FLORENCE WHIPHAM."

Mrs. Beaumont says : —

" I distinctly remember hearing from my husband, either the next
day or the second day after his experience ; and in his letter he asked,
' What were you doing at such an hour on such a night 1 ' I was able to
recall that I was standing in a group of friends, and that we were
regretting his absence. I was in a mauve dress, which I am confident
that he could never have seen.2 « Q BEAUMONT "

* The disappearance of the figure on sudden speech or movement is a feature which
occurs both in subjective and telepathic phantasms, and there could not well be a clearer
indication of the hallucinatory character of the latter. In my large collection of
subjective cases I have only three or four distinct instances, e.g., the first narrative
in Chap, xii., § 2 ; but then it is only in a few cases that the percipient, by speaking or
distinctly moving, has afforded the condition. The point was one of those observed in
Dr. Jessopp's well-known case (Athenceum for Jan. 10, 1880). For telepathic examples,
see cases 26, 159, 163, 178, 192, 196, 201, 214, 241, 540.

2 A similar case is described by Miss E. M. Churchill, of 9, Eversley Park, Chester,
who, in October, 1883, when at lunch, had a visual hallucination representing an absent
sister.

" I remember remarking at the time that I thought I saw my sister all in brown, and
that she had nothing of that colour as far as I knew. A few days afterwards I received
a letter from another sister, in which she mentioned that my younger sister and she had

92 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

Captain Beaumont adds that he has never had any other
hallucination of the senses except on the occasion next described.
This other case, in which the same agent and percipient were
concerned, and a third case appended to it (in which the sameness of
agent and difference of percipient recall the repetitions of the
preceding section), would be quite without evidential value if they
stood alone ; but they are of interest in connection with the fore-
going stronger example.

" February 24th, 1885.

(260) "In 1871 I was staying at Norton House, Tenby, for the first
time, and had just gone to bed, and was wide awake. I had the candle
on my right side, and was reading. At the foot of the bed and to the
right was a door, which was locked, and, as I learnt afterwards, pasted up
on the other side.

" Through this I saw the figure of my future wife (the lady of the
house) enter, draped in white from head to foot. Oddly enough, I was
not specially startled. My idea was that some one was ill, and that she
had come to get something out of the room. I averted my head, and
when I looked up again the apparition was gone. I suppose that I saw
it for two or three seconds. «ALEX. S. BEAUMONT."

Mrs. Beaumont says : —

-I "February 24th, 1885.

"In 1872, two or three months after my marriage, Captain Beaumont
and I returned from London to Tenby. I went up into my dressing-room
and gave the keys of my luggage to my servant, Ellen Bassett. I was
standing before the looking-glass with my back turned to her, and I heard
her utter a little sharp cry. I turned round, saying, ' What's the matter ? '
and saw her with my nightcap in her hand. She said, 'O, nothing,
nothing,' and I went downstairs. The day after, my husband saw her
taking off the paper which pasted up the door between my bedroom and

been getting new winter things, and were dressed in brown from head to foot. I think I
was quite well at the time, but my sister was ill, which I was not aware of for some weeks
afterwards."

Miss Churchill has often had slight momentary hallucinations, as of some one at her
side ; but says that this one was far the most distinct that she has ever experienced. But
brown is, of course, a common colour, and the case is only worth quoting in connection
with the one in the text.

The following is a dream-case of the same type, which has been narrated to Mr. Myers
by both the persons concerned. The narrator is Mrs. W.

" Mrs. P., a friend of Mrs. W., was staying in Devonshire, and one night had a
curious dream about Mrs. W. She dreamt that she (Mrs. P.) came into the drawing-
room in Mrs. W.'s house at T., and had not been many minutes in the room, before Mrs.
W. came in in a loose, red dress, looking very ill. Mrs. P. said to her, ' How very ill you
look ! ' Mrs. W. then answered she had been very unwell, but was then rather better.
Mrs. P. thought this dream odd, and mentioned it to her friends. About a week after,
she came on a visit to Mrs. W., and while she was sitting in the drawing-room, mentioned
the dream, and pointing to a rose-coloured flower, remarked that was the exact shade of
the dress worn in the dream. After comparing notes as to the date, they found that on
the day of Mrs. P.'s dream Mrs. W. had been very unwell, and had worn a dressing-gown
of the exact shade almost all day. The chief peculiarity in this is, that Mrs. P. had
never seen her friend in any colour, Mrs. W. always wearing black, so if she had thought
of Mrs. W. naturally it would be in black."

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 93

the dressing-room. He said, ' What are you doing ? ' She said she was
opening that door. He said, ' Why, the first night that I slept in this
house, I saw your mistress walk through that door.' (I must explain that
Captain Beaumont had been a guest in this house on a good many occasions
before our marriage. On the occasion mentioned, he had imagined that
perhaps someone was ill in the house, and that I had entered his room to
get something, thinking him sure to be asleep.) Then the maid told him
that she had seen me the night before we came home — she did not know
exactly what day we were coming, and had been sleeping in the same bed
as he had been in when he saw me. She was just going to step into bed,
when she saw me enter ' through the door,' 1 with a nightcap on, and a
candle in my hand. She was so terrified that she rushed out of the room
by the other door, and told the other servants she was sure I was dead.
They comforted her as well as they could, but she would not return to the
room. The cause of her crying out, when I heard her do so, was that, in
unpacking, she recognised the identical nightcap that the apparition had
worn. The curious point is that the nightcap was one that I had bought
in London, and had not mentioned to her, and was perfectly unlike any
that I had ever worn before. It had three frills. I had been accustomed
to wear nightcaps of coloured muslin without frills.

" The same servant, some months after the nightcap incident, went
into the kitchen and said to the other servants, ' We shall have news of
missus to-day ; I've just seen her standing in the dining-room door ; she
had on a black velvet bonnet and black cloak.' (We had been in London
some weeks.) This occurred about 9 o'clock a.m. About 10.30 she
received a telegram from us to say we should be home that evening ; the
telegram was sent from Paddington Station as we waited for our train.
The bonnet and cloak had been bought in town without her knowledge.

" The maid was with me for years, and was certainly not nervous or
hysterical. I have now parted with her for some years.

"C. BEAUMONT."

The next case is from Mrs. Murray Gladstone, of Shedfield Cottage,

Botley, Hants.

"January 18th, 1886.

(261) "I went on Saturday afternoon [last] to see an old man and
woman named Bedford, who live in a cottage about half a mile from our
house. Mrs. Bedford was ill in bed, and I went upstairs to see her. I sat
down by the bedstead, and talked to her for a few minutes. Whilst I was
there, the thought struck me that the light from the window, which was oppo-
site the foot of the bed, was too strong for the invalid ; and I determined,
without saying a word about it to either Mr. or Mrs. Bedford, to give her
a curtain. This (Monday) afternoon I again went to see the old couple ;
but this time I only saw Mr. Bedford in the room downstairs. And after
a few remarks he said, ' My wife has seen you yesterday (Sunday) morn-
ing ; she turned her head towards the side of the bed and said, " Is thai
her ? " (I did not speak, as I thought she was dreaming.) " Yes," she went
on, " it is Mrs. Gladstone, and she is holding up a curtain with both her
hands " (imitating the posture), " but she says it is not long enough. Then

1 See Vol. i., p. 432, note.

94 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP

she smiled and disappeared." ' When Mr. Bedford had told me the above,
I exclaimed, ' That is just what I did yesterday morning whilst I was
dressing. I went to a cupboard in my room, and took out a piece of
serge, which I thought would answer the purpose, and held it up with
both hands to see the length, and said to myself, " It is not long enough."'
I may mention that I had only once before been to visit Mrs. Bedford,
about a year ago, before I went on Saturday ; and, of course, both times
wore my walking dress. But when seen by Mrs. Bedford in this vision,
she particularly noticed that I wore no bonnet, which must have been the
case, as this occurred before 9 o'clock. « AUGUSTA GLADSTONE "

Mrs. Gladstone adds : —

" Mrs. B. described me as being in white, and I asked her what I had
on my head. She said, ' A thing like this '• — taking hold of a woollen cap
which I had given her. It was the fac-simile of one which I must have
had on at the time ; and they were not common, for I had knitted them
of wool and of a particular shape."

Mrs. Bedford has had one other hallucination, when she saw the
figure of a young grandchild standing by her bedside. This, however,
happened at night, and may have been half a dream.

When Mrs. Bedford described her experience to the present writer,
she did not use the word curtain, and she did not recall the remark about
the stuff not being long enough ; which suggested that these items might
have crept into the narrative after Mrs. Gladstone's side of the affair had
been related. Mr. Bedford is, however, positive that they formed part of
what his wife told him at the time, and before he saw Mrs. Gladstone ;
and Mrs. Gladstone is equally positive that they were included in his
account to her, and also that she has herself heard of them from Mrs.
Bedford.

The next example is from Colonel Bigge, of 2, Morpeth Terrace,
S.W., who took the account out of a sealed envelope, in my presence,
for the first time since it was written on the day of the occurrence.

(262) " An account of a circumstance which occurred to me when
quartered at Templemore, Co. Tipperary, on 20 February, 1847.

" This afternoon, about 3 o'clock p.m., I was walking from my quarters
towards the mess-room to put some letters into the letter-box, when I
distinctly saw Lieut.-Colonel Reed, 70th Regiment, walking from the
corner of the range of buildings occupied by the officers towards the mess-
room door ; and I saw him go into the passage. He was dressed in a
brown shooting jacket, with grey summer regulation tweed trousers, and
had a fishing-rod and a landing-net in his hand. Although at the time I
saw him he was about 15 or 20 yards from me, and although anxious to
speak to him at the moment, I did not do so, but followed him into the
passage and turned into the ante-room on the left-hand side, where I
expected to find him. On opening the door, to my great surprise, he was
not there ; the only person in the room was Quartermaster Nolan, 70th
Regiment, and I immediately asked him if he had seen the colonel, and
he replied he had not ; upon which I said, ' I suppose he has gone
upstairs,' and I immediately left the room. Thinking he might have gone

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 95

upstairs to one of the officer's rooms, I listened at the bottom of the stairs
and then went up to the first landing place ; but not hearing anything I
went downstairs again and tried to open the bedroom door, which is
opposite to the ante-room, thinking he might have gone there ; but I found
the door locked, as it usually is in the middle of the day. I was very
much surprised at not finding the colonel, and I walked into the barrack-
yard and joined Lieutenant Caulfield, 66th Regiment, who was walking
there ; and I told the story to him, and particularly described the dress in
which I had seen the colonel. We walked up and down the barrack-yard
talking about it for about 10 minutes, when, to my great surprise, never
having kept my eye from the door leading to the mess-room (there is only
one outlet from it), I saw the colonel walk into the barracks through the
gate — which is in the opposite direction — accompanied by Ensign Willing-
ton, 70th Regiment, in precisely the same dress in which I had seen him,
and with a fishing-rod and a landing-net in his hand. Lieutenant Caul-
field and I immediately walked to them, and we were joined by Lieut. -
Colonel Goldie, 66th Regiment, and Captain Hartford, and I asked Colonel
Reed if he had not gone into the mess-room about 10 minutes before. He
replied that he certainly had not, for that he had been out fishing for
more than two hours at some ponds about a mile from the barracks, and
that he had not been near the mess-room at all since the morning.

" At the time I saw Colonel Reed going into the mess-room, I was not
aware that he had gone out fishing — a very unusual thing to do at this
time of the year ; neither had I seen him before in the dress I have
described during that day. I had seen him in uniform in the morning at
parade, but not afterwards at all until 3 o'clock — having been engaged in
my room writing letters, and upon other business. My eyesight being
very good, and the colonel's figure and general appearance somewhat
remarkable, it is morally impossible that I could have mistaken any other
person in the world for him. That I did see him I shall continue to believe
until the last day of my existence.

" WILLIAM MATTHEW BIGGE,

"Major, 70th Regiment."

On July 17th, 1885, after Colonel Bigge had described the occurrence,
but before the account was taken from the envelope and read, he was good
enough to dictate the following remarks to me : —

" When Colonel R. got off' the car about a couple of hours afterwards,
Colonel Goldie and other officers said to me, ' Why that's the very dress
you described.' They had not known where he was or how he was
engaged. The month, February, was a most unlikely one to be fishing in.
Colonel Reed was much alarmed when told what I had seen.

"The quartermaster, sitting at the window, would have been bound to
see a real figure ; he denied having seen anything.

" I have never had the slightest hallucination of the senses on any
other occasion."

[It will be seen that these recent remarks exhibit two slips of memory*
It is quite unimportant whether Colonel Reed was seen walking in at the
gate or getting off a car. But in making the interval between the vision and
the return two hours instead of ten minutes, the later account unduly
diminishes the force of the case. If there is any justification at all for the

96 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

provisional hypothesis that the sense of impending arrival is a condition
favourable for the emission of a telepathic influence, it is of importance
that, at the time when the phantasmal form was seen, Colonel Reed was
not busy with his fishing, but was rapidly approaching his destination ;
for thus the incident, at any rate, gets the benefit of analogy with other
cases. This illustrates what was said above (Vol. I., p. 131), that where
memory errs, it is not always in the direction of exaggeration.]

§ 7. The last case quoted might equally well serve as an example
of the next and concluding group, the peculiarity of which is that the
real person whom the phantasm represents is— unknown to the per-
cipient— actually approaching. When these " arrival cases " were
referred to above (Vol. I., p. 517), it was noted that the mere
sense of returning home cannot be held to constitute an abnormality
in the least degree parallel to death, or the other recognised condi-
tions of spontaneous telepathy ; and our first-hand specimens are in
themselves too few for complete assurance that we have in them a
genuine type of transfer. At the same time they find a parallel
in the impression-cases quoted in Vol. I., pp. 252-4 ; and taken in
connection with the -two preceding groups, they at any rate increase
the probability that impressions from a normal agent may be
occasionally capable of acting as the germ of a telepathic phantasm.

The first example is from Mr. James Carroll, who gave the account
quoted in Vol. I., p. 281. The agent was the same twin-brother who
was concerned in that former case.

"September, 1884.

(263) " In the autumn of 1877, while at Sholebrook Lodge, Towcester,
Northamptonshire, one night, at a little after 10 o'clock, I remember I
was about to move a lamp in my room to a position where I usually sat
a little while before retiring to bed, when I suddenly saw a vision of my
brother. It seemed to affect me like a mild shock of electricity. It
surprised me so that I hesitated to carry out what I had intended, my eyes
remaining fixed on the apparition of my brother. It gradually disap-
peared, leaving me wondering what it meant. I am positive no light
or reflection deceived me. I had not been sleeping or rubbing my eyes.
I was again in the act of moving my lamp when I heard taps along
the window. I looked towards it — the window was on the ground-floor —
and heard a voice, my brother's, say, ' It's I ; don't be frightened.' I let
him in ; he remarked, ' How cool you are ; I thought I should have
frightened you.'

" The fact was, that the distinct vision of my brother had quite
prepared me for his call. He found the window by accident, as he had
never been to the house before ; to use his own words, ' I thought it was
your window, and that I should find you.' He had unexpectedly left
London to pay me a visit, and when near the house lost his way, and had
found his way in the dark to the back of the place."

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 97

In reply to inquiries, Mr. Carroll says : —

"You are quite right in supposing the hallucination of my brother to
be the only instance in my experience."

In another letter, Mr. Carroll says : —

" As to the apparition of my brother in Northamptonshire, at a place
and window where he had never before been, — I think I said the room
was very light indeed, the night very dark. Even had I looked out of the
window I could not have seen him. With my head turned from the
window, I distinctly saw his face. I was affected and surprised. It
seemed like a slight shock of electricity. I had not recovered from the
effects when the second surprise came, the reality — my brother. I did not
mention the subject to him then, being rather flattered at his astonishment
at my cool demeanour. The coolness was caused by the apparition first of
him. The window my brother came to was at the back of the house. He
found my window out only by accident, or, as he said, he thought it was
my window."

[Mr. Carroll is a clear-headed and careful witness. He is quite
positive as to this being his only experience of a hallucination. In con-
versation, he stated that there were no mirrors in the room, and that the
figure was seen not in the direction of the window. He thinks that the
interval between the hallucination and his brother's appearance was about
a minute.]

Here the gradual disappearance, if correctly remembered, is
interesting as a feature which is occasionally met with in purely
subjective hallucinations (Chap. XII., §§ 2 and 10).1

The next example is a " collective " case,2 but had better be
quoted in the present connection. The narrator is the late Rev. W.
Mountford, of Boston, U.S.A., a minister and author of repute.

(264) " One day, some 15 years ago, I went from the place of my abode
to see some friends who resided in the fen districts of Norfolk. They were
persons whom I knew, not merely well, but intimately. They were two
brothers who had married two sisters. Their houses were a mile and a
quarter apart, but standing on the same road, and with only two or three
other habitations intervening. The road was a straight, bare, open road, like
what is so often to be seen in the fens, and used chiefly and almost
exclusively by the occupants of the few farms alongside of it. The house
at which I was visiting stood about 10 yards from the edge of the road.
The day was tine and clear — a day in March. About 4 o'clock in the
afternoon I stood at the window, and looking up the road I said, ' Here
is your brother coming.' My host advanced to the window and said, ' Oh
yes, here he is ; and see, Robert has got Dobbin out at last.' Dobbin was
a horse which, on account of some accident, had not been used for some
weeks. The lady also looked out at the window, and said to me, ' And T

1 Compare cases 185, 194, 207, 263, 311, 315, 331, 350, 488, 503, 514, 544, 553, 567, 672,
673 ; also cases 189 and 328, and the account in Vol. L, p. 454, note, where the expression
" melted away " is used.

2 Compare the carriage cases described in Chap, xviii., § 5.

VOL. II. H

98 FURTHER VISUAL CASES [CHAP.

am so glad, too, that my sister is with him. They will be delighted to
find you here.'

" I recognised distinctly the vehicle in which they rode as being an
open one, also the lady and the gentleman, and both their dress, and
their attitudes.

" Our friends passed at a gentle pace along the front of the window, and
then turning with the road round the corner of the house, they could not
longer be seen. After a minute my host went to the door and exclaimed,
' Why, what can be the matter 1 They have gone on without calling, a
thing they never did in their lives before. What can be the matter 1 '

" Five minutes afterwards, while we were seated by the fireside, the
parlour door opened, and there entered a lady of about 25 years of age ;
she was in robust health and in full possession of all her senses, and she
was possessed, besides, of a strong common-sense. She was pale and
much excited, and the moment she opened the door she exclaimed, ' Oh,
aunt, I have had such a fright. Father and mother have passed me on
the road without speaking. I looked up at them as they passed by, but
they looked straight on and never stopped nor said a word. A quarter of
an hour before, when I started to walk here, they were sitting by the fire ;
and now, what can be the matter 1 They never turned nor spoke, and
yet I am certain that they must have seen me.'

" Ten minutes after the arrival of this lady, I, looking through the
window up the road, said, ' But see, here they are, coming down the road
again.'

" My host said, ' No, that is impossible, because there is no path by
which they could get on to this road, so as to be coming down it again.
But sure enough, here they are, and with the same horse ! How in the
world have they got here 1 '

" We all stood at the window, and saw pass before us precisely the
same appearance which we had seen before — lady and gentleman, and
horse and carriage. My host ran to the door and exclaimed, ' How did
you get here 1 How did you get on to the road to be coming down here
again now ? '

" ' I get on the road ? What do you mean 1 I have just come straight
from home.'

" ' And did you not come down the road and pass the house, less than
a quarter of an hour ago *? '

" ' No,' said the lady and gentleman both. ' This is the first time that
we have come down the road to-day.'

" ' Certainly ' we all said, ' you passed these windows less than a
quarter of an hour ago. And, besides, here is Mary, who was on the road
and saw you.'

" ' Nonsense,' was the answer. ' We are straight from home, as you may
be very sure. For how could you have seen us pass by before, when you
did see us coming down now 1 '

" ' Then you mean to say that really you did not pass by here 10 or 15
minutes ago ? '

" ' Certainly ; for at that time, probably, we were just coming out of
the yard and starting to come here.'

" We all of us remained much amazed at this incident. There were
four of us who had seen this appearance, and seen it under such circum-

xiv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT, 99

stances as apparently precluded any possibility of our having mistaken
some casual passengers for our intimate friends. We were quite satisfied
that we had really not seen our bodily friends pass down the road, that
first time when we thought that we saw them. As for myself, I was sure
that it was not they ; and yet hardly could I help feeling that it could
have been no persons else.

"There is an old saying about keeping a thing 10 years, and then
finding a use for it. This curious experience of mine is as vivid in my
mind as though it were of yesterday. Is it of use as illustrating
mistakes as to identity, or is it rather a singular instance of what is called
second-sight ?

"M."

This account was first published in the Spiritual Magazine for August,
1860. On our writing to Mr. Mountford on the subject he replied : —

" Beacon Street, Boston, U.S.A.
"8th August, 1884.

"The narrative of which you have sent me a copy was written by
myself, as you had rightly supposed. It was carefully prepared, and I
believe it to be as exactly true as any report ever made by phonograph or
photograph.

" At the time when the occurrence happened, I was simply amazed at
it, and I felt but just simply as some untaught ploughman might have felt
in the open field, if an aerolite had fallen at his feet, hot from the skies.

"The persons besides myself, of whom I wrote in that account, were
all of the family name of Coe, and were all of Islington, near King's Lynn ;
and they were all living at the time when I wrote about them, but they
have all been carried away.

" I have only to add that Mrs. Robert Coe said that she and her
husband knew of their daughter's having started to see her aunt, but that
they had had no intention of following her till Mr. Robert Coe,
suddenly starting from his chair by the fireside, exclaimed ' Let us go to
Clement's.' "

[It is much to be regretted that this experience was not recorded in
writing at the moment, and signed by all the persons concerned. At the
same time the hypothesis that it was a mere mistake or illusion is strongly
discountenanced by the persistence of the contrary impression in a sound
and rationally sceptical mind. For the natural tendency of such a mind
is undeniably to be less certain of the reality of abnormal facts after a long
interval than at the time of their occurrence.1]

It will be convenient to complete the account of this " arrival "
type by citing at once a couple of auditory cases, which belong
by rights to the next chapter. The following account is from Mr.
J. Stevenson, of 28, Prospect Street, Gateshead.

1 It is interesting, for instance, to find an able observer, M. Marillier, candidly
admitting that, but for written notes and other indisputable evidence, he could easily
come to believe that his own very vivid subjective hallucinations of some years ago were a
disease of memory, and were never really experienced (Revue Philosophique for February,
1886, p. 206).

VOL. II. H 2

100 FURTHER VISUAL CASES. [CHAP.

"April 20th, 1885.

(265) "During the months of May and June, 1881, my brother was
staying with us. He went out one Sunday night between 5 and 6 o'clock. He
did not say what time he would return, but his time was generally about
10 p.m. About 7 o'clock, while I was reading by the window, and Mrs.
Stevenson by the fire, all being quiet, I heard a voice say ' David is
coming.' I instantly turned to Mrs. S., asking what she said. She said,
'I have not spoken a word.' I told her that I heard someone say that
' David is coming.' I then thought I had imagined it, but, lo and behold !
in less than 3 minutes, in he comes, quite unexpected. I was surprised,
but did not mention anything to him about it. The position of the house
prevented us from seeing him until just about to enter the house. He was
in good health, as we all were at the time. This is a candid statement of
the facts.

" Jos. STEVENSON."

In answer to an inquiry, Mr. Stevenson adds : —

" This was the sole experience I have had of the kind. I have never
experienced any hallucination."

Mrs. Stevenson corroborates as follows : —

" In reference to my husband's letter of April 20th, I have pleasure in
testifying to the accuracy of his account, and of his drawing my attention
to the fact at the time mentioned.

"SERENA STEVENSON."

The remaining auditory specimen (266) is from Mrs. Robinson,
residing at The Warren, Caversham, Reading, who has never experi-
enced a hallucination on any other occasion. Some 14 years ago, she
tells us, she was sitting at needlework in the evening, when she heard
the voice of her son, Stansford Robinson — who was supposed to be
abroad, but had not been heard of for some time — calling, " Nar,
Nar, Nar," the pet name of an old family nurse. The triple call was
twice repeated. Mrs. Robinson opened the door, fully expecting to
find her son in the hall, but no one was there. The son " returned
unexpectedly next day, very ill, and died soon after." 1

1 It is perhaps worth while to point out the wide difference between such hallucina-
tions of voices and one of the alleged phenomena sometimes included under the general
name of " second-sight " — to wit, notice given of the approach of travellers, some time
before their actual arrival, by a sound of horses' feet outside the house. _ (See, e.g.,
Description of the Isle of Man, by George Waldron, 1744, p. 75.) It is obvious (1) how
easily an auditory impression of that sort may be a mere illusion — just as the swirling of
leaves is probably accountable for many of the tales of phantom carriages driving up to
the door ; and (2) how certain it is that, among a population holding such a belief, the
occasional coincidence, when the suggestive sound was heard and the guest arrived, would
be noted as a marvel, and the sounds which no arrival followed would find no place in the
reckoning. It would not occur to a Manx peasant to make capital out of even the
failures — as I have actually seen done — by calling them " inverted coincidences " !

XV.]

CHAPTER XV.

FURTHER AUDITORY CASES OCCURRING TO A SINGLE
PERCIPIENT.

§ 1. IN examining cages of auditory phantasms which have strikingly
corresponded with real events, we have two main points to look to.
First, there is the phantasm regarded merely as a sensory
phenomenon, on a par with the visual phantasms. This, of course,
is the sound in itself ; which is occasionally of an inarticulate sort,
a simple noise ; but which in the large majority of instances repre-
sents the tone of a human voice — the voice, like the visual phantasm,
being either recognised or unrecognised. But, secondly, when the
phantasm is a voice, there is a further element, which has as a rule
no analogue in the visual class — namely, what the voice says ; and
this is likely to afford us some clue as to whether a complete and
definite idea has been telepathically conveyed from the agent
or merely an impulse or germ which the percipient has developed in
his own way. We find that the auditory cases, like the visual,
present various stages of apparent externalisation j1 but the discrimina-
tions here are less marked — it being more difficult in the case of
sounds than of sights to decide, in recalling them, how far the
impression seemed inward, and how far outward ; while even if the
special stage be clear in the percipient's mind, it is not easy to find
words to describe it.

I will begin with recognised voices ; and will first quote a
few cases where the analogy to experimental thought-transference
is strongest, inasmuch as what the percipient heard seems to have
represented the actual sensation of the agent,2 the very words which
he was hearing while he uttered them — in one instance, however, so"
dulled as to be indistinguishable as words. The following account

1 See the account of some of these stages as exemplified in purely subjective hallucina-
tions, Vol. i., pp. 480-2.

2 See Vol. i., p. 536, note.

102 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

is from Mrs. Stone, of Walditch, Bridport, the narrator of case 257,

above.

"January 29th, 1883.

(257) " On the 13th of January, 1882, my eldest son, who had been
paying us a visit, left by a morning train for his home ; but I did not
know the exact time at which he would reach his destination. In the
afternoon of that day, my daughter having gone to the neighbouring
town (Bridport), I was sitting at work by a window of which the upper
ventilator was open. Suddenly I heard my son's voice distinctly ; I could
not mistake it ; he was speaking eagerly, and as if bothered ; the voice
seemed wafted to me by an air current, but I could not distinguish words.
I was startled, but not very much frightened ; the voice did not seem to
indicate accident or calamity. I looked at my watch, which pointed to
three minutes past 3. In perhaps a few seconds, his voice began again,
but soon became faint, and died away in the distance. When my daughter
came in, I told her, and mentioned the hour ; she said that was just the
time my son expected to arrive, if the train was punctual. I also
mentioned it to my son who is living with me. The next morning I was
very thankful to get a post-card from my eldest son : ' Arrived all right,
train very punctual, just three minutes past 3; but to my annoyance, I
found no carriage waiting for me, or my luggage, only Frank on his
bicycle. He explained that they had made a mistake by looking at the
station clock (which was an hour too slow), and had driven away again.'
I wrote the whole account to my son, but he is rather sceptical on these
subjects ; he could not but own it was a "strange coincidence, but asked,
' Why, mother, didn't you hear Frank's voice too ? '

" LUCIA C. STONE."

Miss Edith Stone has confirmed verbally what is recorded of her in
the above account. Another son, Mr. Walter Stone, also recollects having
been told of the incident.

On February 16th, 1885, Mrs. Stone wrote as follows : —
" A few days since, I came upon my son's letter, written rather more
than a week after the occurrence. The post-card mentioned was lost, and
it was by chance this letter turned up. I enclose the first page for what
it is worth, very trivial save for the impression it made on me. I am
more than ever convinced of the value of verifying matters of this kind."

The first page of the son's letter ran as follows : —

"Eton, January 22nd, 1882.

" DEAREST MOTHER, — If you heard my voice it must have been when
I was waiting for the arrival of the carriage, and expressing loudly my
surprise at its not having arrived at the station to meet me. I think I
told you that Frank was there, on his bicycle, and we both jabbered
considerably. You ought to have heard him too."

[Mrs. Stone has had no other hallucination of a recognised voice, except
on one occasion, 20 years ago, soon after a bereavement (see Vol. I.,
pp. 510-2). More than five years ago, she had on several evenings the
impression of hearing voices in the room below her own. This slight
predisposition to auditory hallucination would hardly affect the case ; but
the coincidence is of course rendered less striking by the reflection that

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 103

Mr. Stone may have spoken " eagerly and as if bothered " on a good many
other occasions.]

The next case is more complete, inasmuch as the actual word used
by the agent was distinguished by the percipient. The account is
from Mr. R. Fryer, of Bath, brother of our valued friend and helper,
the Rev. A. T. Fryer, of Clerkenwell, who tells us that he " distinctly
remembers being told of the occurrence within a few weeks of its
happening." He explains that " Rod " was the name by which his

brother, the percipient, was called in the family.

"January, 1883.

(268) " A strange experience occurred in the autumn of the year
1879. A brother of mine had been from home for 3 or 4 days, when, one
afternoon, at half-past 5 (as nearly as possible), I was astonished to hear
my name called out very distinctly. I so clearly recognised my brother's
voice that I looked all over the house for him ; but not finding him, and
indeed knowing that he must be distant some 40 miles, I ended by
attributing the incident to a fancied delusion, and thought no more about
the matter. On my brother's arrival home, however, on the sixth day, he
remarked amongst other things that he had narrowly escaped an ugly
accident. It appeared that, whilst getting out from a railway carriage,
he missed his footing, and fell along the platform ; by putting out his
hands quickly he broke the fall, and only suffered a severe shaking.
' Curiously enough,' he said, ' when I found myself falling I called out
your name.' This did riot strike me for a moment, but on my asking him
during what part of the day this happened, he gave me the time, which I
found corresponded exactly with the moment I heard myself called."

In answer to an inquiry, Mr. R. Fryer adds : —

" I do not remember ever having a similar experience to the one
narrated to you ; nor should I care to, as the sensation, together with the
suspense as to the why and wherefore of the event, is the reverse of pleasant."

In conversation, he has explained that he had frequently expostulated
with his brother on the latter's habit of alighting from trains in motion ;
and the automatic utterance of his name, on this occasion, might thus be
accounted for by association.

The agent's account of the matter is as follows : —

" Newbridge Road, Bath.

"November 16th, 1885.

•" In the year 1879, I was travelling, and in the course of my journey
I had to stop at Gloucester. In getting out of the train, I fell, and was
assisted to rise by one of the railway officials. He asked if I was hurt,
and asked if I had anyone travelling with me. I replied ' No ' to both
questions, and inquired why he asked. He replied, ' Because you called
out " Rod." ' I distinctly recollect making use of the word Rod.

" On arriving home, a day or two afterwards, I related the circunl-
stance, and my brother inquired the time and date. He then told me
he had heard me call at that particular time. He was so sure of its
being my voice that he made inquiries as to whether I was about or not.

"JOHN T. FRYER."

104 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

Curiously similar is the next case, sent to us by Miss Frome, of
Ewell, Surrey, in the handwriting of the friend, a doctor by profession
whose experience is narrated. She thoroughly relies on his word, and
has communicated his name. He himself dislikes the subject, and
has no belief that such coincidences can be anything but accidental.

"April 14th, 1884.

(269) "In February, 1862, an undergraduate of one of our northern
universities was, and had been for some time, reading hard for the
approaching examination for the degree which he was desirous of
acquiring. His brother, an officer in the merchant service, was at sea,
and at this time in a ship not far from the coast of the East Indies.

" One evening, about 7 p.m., the former was at work in his own rooms,
in company with a friend, also studying with the same object, when he
suddenly heard his Christian name, shortened as was the custom in his own
family circle, of which there were none (or even of intimate friends) in the
city he was then inhabiting. He heard himself called sharply and clearly,
and, astonished rather, looked up from his books and asked his friend if
he spoke, who answered in the negative, evidently surprised. Again, in
an instant, he heard the sound again, and turned to his friend, saying,
' Don't be foolish ; what is it ? ' The reply was, ' I said nothing.' He then
asked, ' Did you not hear anything 1 My name called ? ' ' No, I heard
nothing,' was the answer.

" Almost as these brief words were passing between the two men, he
of whom this story is related heard again, once, twice, quickly repeated,
his name, clearly and distinctly, and then he seemed to recognise it as like
his brother's voice. He could not understand it, and, feeling rather
mystified and put out, thought he would stop work and rest, so telling his
friend he would do no more that night, went off to the theatre. On his
return, sitting over the fire, he thought the matter over, and came to the
conclusion that, being out of health to some extent, the mental fatigue he
was going threugh had upset his brain functions a little ; so he put the
subject from him, simply making a note of the occurrence, and thought no
more of it.

" Some months later, about the end of June, he was in London to meet
his brother, who was returning from sea. On the evening of the arrival
of the latter, the two brothers were talking together, the younger describing
his voyage and the various incidents that had happened, and suddenly said,
' By the way, I was very nearly not coming home any more ; I had a very
narrow squeak of being drowned. I fell overboard one night somewhere
about midnight, and I thought I was done for, but after a while I was
luckily picked up. However, it was a close shave, and I did not expect to see
you again, old chap, but I thought of you, and sung out and called at you.'

"The elder brother, recollecting the occurrence to himself in the
northern city, asked the other when this occurred, and heard in reply that
it was on the same day on which that which has been stated happened to
him. He then told his brother his story, and, comparing the two, all
points agreed except the hours, about 7 o'clock and about midnight —
when the sailor brother quietly pointed out that, allowing for the
difference of time in the two places, the actual time was probably the same.

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 105

" They talked the matter over, but could make no more of it. Neither
of them had any belief in supernatural manifestations. Nothing of the
kind ever happened to them again in after life in any degree. The younger
brother died at sea a few years ago."

Here we have once more the feature of repetition after a short
interval, which seems, by the way, to be decidedly commoner in audi-
tory hallucinations of the telepathic than of the purely subjective
class.1 Another fact to be noticed is that the voice was not heard by
the percipient's companion — this being a point in which the hallucina-
tory character of telepathic affections of the senses often appears
(Chap. XII., § 10).2

In the following case, it is alleged that the actual words heard
were used by the agent. The narrative is from an English physician
residing in a foreign town, who wishes his name suppressed, fearing

professional prejudice.

" October 22nd, 1883.

(270) " Years ago there were two girls, half Italian half English, here,
one with a very fine voice. The poor girl from over-straining got spitting
of blood. I attended her. One morning she begged me to see her sister,
who was crying her heart out, as she expressed it, hysterics, &c., &c.,
owing to an absurd dream, she said. I went into her sister's room, and
found her as described ; she then told me it was not a dream, but that
she was broad awake, and heard her sister's voice from the garden — •
'Georgie, Georgie, I must see you before I die.' By dint of coaxing,
bullying, reasoning, and exhortation, I got her quieted down, and nothing
more was thought of it ; but at the time required to hear from England,
a letter came announcing her sister's death ; and further inquiries
elicited that it occurred exactly at the time she heard the voice (allow-
ing for distance), and that the last words she uttered were those heard
from the garden."

[In answer to an inquiry, the narrator says that he did not actually
see the letter which conveyed the intelligence of the sister's death ; the
exactitude of the coincidence rests therefore on second-hand evidence. He
was, however, in daily communication with the family.]

In the next case, the words heard were vividly imagined by the
agent, and may very probably have been uttered, or half-uttered.
The account is from Mr. J. Pike, of 122, Stockwell Park Road, S.W.

"October, 1883.

(271) "Travelling some years since from Carlisle to Highbury, by the
night mail train, and, finding myself alone in my compartment, I lay at
full length on the seat with a view to sleep, having previously requested tho,

1 Compare cases 154, 266, 278, 285, 287, 341, 342, 508, 674, 676, 679 ; and see Chap,
xii., § 10.

2 See, e.g., cases 28, 34, 189, 206, 212, 242, 265, 271, 274, 307, 329, 337, 347, 355, 491,
517, 522, 534, 561, 567, 607, 609, 610, 618, 620, 633, 634/638. Cases 552 (see " Additions and
Corrections," under heading p. 511), and 685 should perhaps be added. In cases 666 and
684, the experience was unsnared by one of the persons present.

106 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

guard to wake me at the Camden Town Station. I soon fell into a deep
sleep, one of those profound slumbers the awakening from which is almost
painful. Roused suddenly by the guard waking me (somewhat roughly
and impatiently, because the train was behind its time), I found that I had
been dreaming (what proved indeed to be the case) that it was morning ;
that I was at home, in my bedroom, in the act of dressing, and at the
moment of awakening had been on the landing and twice called the
servant by her name, ' Sarah,' and asked her to bring me some hot water.
" On actually arriving at home, I learnt that at the time when I had
been thus dreaming that I was calling to the servant, she had heard her
name called by me tuuice, distinctly ; that — forgetting for the moment that
I was not in the house — she, hastily discontinuing the breakfast prepara-
tions, ran upstairs, and afterwards came down again ' as white as a ghost '
—according to the description given to me by the children who, with
astonishment, witnessed her proceedings, and not having themselves heard
the call, naturally wondered what it all meant. Sarah subsequently
informed me that the ' fright ' she experienced on realising the fact that I
was not there had made her ' quite ill.' "

Mr. Pike's daughter gave the following corroboration on Oct. 30, 1883 : —

" I distinctly remember the incident of our servant being frightened by
hearing my father's voice calling from upstairs, at a time when we knew
he could not be anywhere near our home. The servant took a poker in
her hand and went upstairs, thinking there must be some man there who
had imitated my father's voice. Nothing, however, was discovered to
explain the mystery until my father's arrival at home, when he told us
that at the time the call was heard he had been dreaming that he was at
home and calling for hot water. « ^LMA ]yj PIKE "

[The genuineness of this case does not, of course, depend on the
servant's evidence, but on the testimony of Miss Pike that the servant
mentioned her experience before Mr. Pike's arrival. I have stated above
(Vol. I., p. 514) that my collection of purely subjective hallucinations
includes several instances where a servant has seemed to hear her mistress
calling her— a fact which of course goes to weaken the force of the
described coincidence. But the superior vividness of the impression in the
present instance seems proved by the emotion and alarm which followed it,
and which had no sort of parallel in the purely subjective cases referred to.]

Here, it will be seen, the condition of the agent was not one of
distress or crisis, but simply that of vivid dream ; and the case is in
this way exceptional. Affections of a waking percipient by a
dreaming agent — or at any rate cases which could be used as
evidence for such affections — seem a rarer type than that of simul-
taneous and correspondent dreaming, illustrated in Vol. I., pp., 314-8,
and in Chap. III. of the Supplement ; but cases 94 and 96 were very
probably examples of it. In the present instance, it should be
noted that the part of the dream which apparently affected the
percipient took place in the very shock of waking ; and such a shock,

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 107

though not critical or exactly painful, clearly involves a far wider and
more sudden change of psychical condition than often occurs to us
during waking life.

In the next case it is very possible that the agent actually used
the words heard, but proof of this fact is unattainable. If he did not,
we must suppose some idea of his distress to have been objectified
by the percipient in the " agonised tone." The account is from Mr.

Lister Ives, master at the Grammar School, Stockport.

" 1883.

(272) "About midday of the 24th July, 1875, 1 was in the baths at
Llandudno, when I suddenly and distinctly heard my boy's voice calling
loudly and in an agonised tone. So assured was I of it being his voice,
that I hastily got out of the bath and looked out of the nearest window,
thinking he must be on the rocks beneath — the bath-house stands on a
rock, though since then much has been cut away — though I believed him
at the time to be, as indeed he was, at the other side of the Orme's Head,
three or four miles away. The boy was killed at that very time by a fall
from the rocks."

We find from a report of the accident in the Stockport Advertiser that
the date was the 26th (not the 24th) of July. The boy had joined his
parents on the 24th, which may perhaps account for the mistake.

Mrs. Ives says : —

" Until late at night, when the boy did not return, my husband had
thought no more of the circumstance. When the boy could not be found
he exclaimed, ' We shall never see him alive again,' for he remembered
the sound of the voice ; but it was not until some time afterwards that he
told me that he felt assured he had heard the last cry, not a supernatural
warning, but a cry for help when none could reach him. I made
memoranda of all the circumstances connected with the unhappy affair,
and of that [i.e., the voice] among the rest. With regard to the distance
which the sound came, I can scarcely give absolute information. The
headland is of peculiar form ; but according to local maps, if they are to
be relied upon, if it were possible to take a direct line through the
mountain from the Crab Rocks, where my boy was found, to the baths
where Mr. Ives was, it would measure something over 3,000 yards ; round
by the path, as it then was, about 3 miles ; over the summit, I cannot tell
how far."

'Mr. C. Kroll Laporte, of Birkdale, Southport, says : —

" Mr. Ives told me all this [i.e., the incident of the voice] the day after
the funeral, and I noted it down."

[Our colleague, Mr. Richard Hodgson, has had an interview with Mr.
and Mrs. Ives. Mr. Ives has had no other hallucinations. The time of
the boy's death was estimated only. He was expected back to dinner art
1 p.m., and it was between 12 and 1 p.m. that Mr. Ives was bathing
and heard the cry. The words he heard were, ' Papa ! mamma ! ' in an
agonised tone. The boy was 18 years of age. He appeared to have
fallen on the rocks face downwards, from a height of about 80 feet. The

108 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

cliff at the spot begins at the summit with a sloping bank of grass, which
suddenly, however, is followed by an almost sheer precipice, not seen from
the top of the bank.]

§ 2. We come now to cases where the name heard was probably
not actually spoken. The fact that the impression so often takes the
form of a call of the percipient's name might be connected with the
fact that this is also the commonest form of purely subjective
auditory hallucination ; and might be taken as a fresh indication —
parallel to the indications which have been noted in the visual class —
that the telepathic phantasm, as a sensory phenomenon, truly belongs
to the class of hallucinations. But it is in the very nature of this
form of communication that it should strongly suggest — what in the
following instance is positively affirmed — a certain occupation of the
agent's thoughts with the percipient. We have often independent
reason to suppose a similar condition in the visual cases ; but there
is seldom anything in the visual phantasm of the agent to make it
apparent.

The first case is from Mr. G. A. Witt, of Fontenay House, Grove

Park, Denmark Hill, S.E.

- "September 26th, 1885.

(273) "When I left Bombay, on March 1st, 1876, by ss. ' Persia,' for
Naples, an elder brother of mine was living in Germany, and in very bad
health, though I did not, at the time, anticipate his early death. When
in the Red Sea one day, sitting on deck and reading the Saturday Review,
with other passengers — and I think Mrs. Fagan also — sitting near me and
reading, I fancied I heard my brother's voice calling me by my Christian
name. It seemed so distinctly his voice, and I thought I heard my name
so clearly called, that it quite startled me, and made such an impression
on me that I mentioned it to some of my fellow passengers, and at their
suggestion took note of the hour and day it occurred.

"On arriving at Naples, some 12 or 14 days later, I found a letter
there from my mother, bearing the same date as the one I had put down
in the Red Sea, in which she told me that she was sitting writing by my
brother's deathbed, &c., adding in a postscript the same day that he had
just passed away.

" I never ascertained whether the hour I had put down was the same
in which my poor brother had died, and now really all I remember is what
I have just stated. .. Q ^ WITT."

In answer to inquiries, Mr Witt says : —

" I was, at the time, not at all anxious about my brother ; and the
' voice ' at the time impressed me as very strange, as I really had not
thought of him for some time. My brother died in Kiel, Holstein. The
date was the 13th of March, 1876. This was the date of my brother's
death; and I remember that that was what caused me to mention the
matter again to those whom I had told on board the steamer that I

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 109

thought I had heard my brother's voice. I must repeat, however, that
what I am stating now is from memory only, and the ' note ' I had
made of the occurrence at the time no longer exists.

" It is also the only time that, as far as I remember, anything of the
kind has happened to me." [This is in answer to the question whether
he had experienced a hallucination of the senses on any other occasion.]

Mrs. Fagan, of 26, Manchester Square, W., writes to us as follows : —

"August 28th, 1885.

" On board ship, coming from India, one morning I passed Mr. Witt,
who was reading on deck. He stopped me and said that a strange thing
had happened to him, and on my asking what it was, said that he had heard
his brother's voice calling him, ' Gustave,' more than once (three times, I
think, but am not sure). He added that he had heard, before leaving
Bombay, that his brother was very seriously ill,1 and thinking that perhaps
he was then dying, or just dead, he made a note of the date. I asked him
to let me know afterwards if the brother really died about that time, and
he said he would do so.

" On meeting him in London afterwards, I inquired if his conjecture had
proved correct, and he said it had. I do not know whether the time when
Mr. Witt heard the voice coincided exactly with the brother's death, as
the difference in the local time made it difficult to decide that point
without calculation ; and I did not hear that any calculation was made.
But the two events occurred at about the same time. Mr. Witt offers
no explanation or opinion on the matter, only saying that it was very
strange."

We have procured, through the Biirgermeister of Kiel, an official
certificate of the death of Mr. John T. Witt, which shows that it
occurred on March 13, 1876, at 9.30 p.m. Supposing therefore that Mr.
G. A. Witt's experience was immediately mentioned by him, and that
Mrs. Fagan is right in her recollection that this was in the morning, it
must have preceded the death by a good many hours. If either of these
suppositions is incorrect, the coincidence may have been closer.

The next account is from Mrs. Stella, of Chieri, Italy, who was

the percipient in the visual case, No. 198.

"December 29th, 1883.

(274) " On the 22nd of May, 1882, I was sitting in my room working
with other members of my family, and we were talking of household matters,
when suddenly I heard the voice of my eldest son calling repeatedly
' Mamma.' I threw down my work exclaiming, ' There is Nino,' and went
downstairs, to the astonishment of every one. Now my son was at that
time in London, and had only left home about a fortnight before, for a two
months' tour, so naturally we were all surprised to think he had arrived
so suddenly. On reaching the hall, no one was there, and they all laughed
at my imagination. But I certainly heard him call, not only once, but
three or four times, impatiently. I learnt, a few days afterwards, that on
that day he had been taken ill in London at the house of some friends, and

1 This of course was true, in a sense ; but, in view of the possible suggestion that the
hallucination was due to mere anxiety, it is important to notice that Mr. Witt had re-
garded his brother as a chronic invalid, and expressly affirms that, so far from being
anxious about him, he had not even thought of him for some time.

110 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

that he had frequently expressed a wish that I should come and nurse him,
as not speaking English he could not make himself understood."

Mrs. Stella tells us, on inquiry, that this is her only experience of an
auditory hallucination.

The following corroboration is from a lady who was present at the
time : —

"Breslau, February 18th, 1884.

" Mrs. Stella asked me to give you an account of an episode which
occurred in my presence, while on a visit to her two years ago ; and the
following are the facts as nearly as I can remember them. We were
sitting working together, when Mrs. Stella said she heard the voice of her
son, who was absent in England at the time, calling her. This caused us
some surprise, as he was not expected home, nor had we heard any sounds
of an arrival.

" On going downstairs to meet him, we found no one, which astonished
us, as Mrs. Stella had been so positive that she had heard him call. We
afterwards heard that on that day he had been taken ill in London. I
may here remark that young Mr. Stella is very much attached to his
mamma, and especially dependent upon her in sickness.

" CLARA SCHMIDT."

The next case is from Mr. W. T. Bray, of Schekoldin's Paper Mill,
Vimishma, Government of Kostroma, Russia.

"June 14th (O.S.), 1885.

(275) " I was employed as assistant engineer on the Moscow-Kursk
Railway, and one day was standing in the erecting shop. There were 14
engines under repair, and 4 tenders, and amidst all the attendant noise
of such work of fitters and boilermakers, I heard a voice quite close to me
call twice, ' Will, Will ! ' The voice resembled my father's (he was the
only person who called me ' Will '), and in a tone he used when he wished
to particularly draw my attention to anything. When I went home I
remarked to my wife I was afraid, if ever I heard from poor father again,
or from any one about him, [there had been a certain breach of inter-
course,] it would be bad news, for I distinctly heard him call me twice.
About three weeks afterwards, I had a letter from a sister, stating he had
died, and when ; and his last words were, ' Good-bye, Will ! good-bye, Will!'
Upon comparing the date and time, he died about the time I heard the voice."

Mr. Bray adds, in a letter dated August 21st (O.S.), 1885 : —

" I am sorry I cannot get a few lines likely to confirm my statement
to you ; the circumstance occurred so long ago. I remember mentioning it
to my wife at the time, but she cannot distinctly remember it, and I
mentioned it to no one but her, and then only at the time. I remembered
the work I was looking after at the time, and upon hearing of my father's
death I traced the time by the factory books ; and as no one either here or
in England ever called me ' Will ' but he, I always feel quite satisfied in
my own mind that I heard his voice, especially as I was told in the letter
announcing his death his last words were, ' Good-bye, Will ! good-bye,
Will ! ' " W. THOS. BRAY." *

In answer to a question whether he had ever had any other auditory

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. Ill

hallucination, Mr. Bray replies, " Such a thing never occurred to me before,
neither has anything occurred since." He adds that his father died on
March 22, 1873 ; and we have confirmed this date by the Register of Deaths.
We first heard of this case from Mr. Bray's son, who said that he was
himself told of his father's experience at the time, and that at his suggestion
a note of the day and hour was made. But his account presents so many
differences from the first-hand one that his memory on this point cannot
be relied on.

The next case is from Mr. D. J. Hutchins, of 173, Severn Road,
Cardiff.

" December 17th, 1883.

(276) " My father died suddenly, about 48 miles away from where my
mother resided. I had to acquaint her of the melancholy fact. A railway
journey, and then a drive of 12 miles would take me to her abode. I
should arrive about 6 a.m. on a dark November morning. Secretly
perplexed how I should break the news, I was relieved and surprised to
see, as I neared the house, smoke issuing from parlour and kitchen
chimneys. On arriving at the gate, and before time was given me to
jump out of the trap, mother was at the door and said, ' Daniel, your
father is dead.' I asked, ' How do you know 1 ' She replied, ' He came
and called for me last night about 9 o'clock, and then vanished. I have
not been to bed since.' Sorrow, combined with a strange feeling that
somehow or other she might have been the means of hastening his death,
caused her to die suddenly a short time afterwards. She was an intensely
religious woman, without superstition. I well remember the anger she
always displayed when she heard that her children had been listeners to
the usual fireside talk about ghosts and presentiments.

" D. J. HUTCHINS."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Hutchins adds : —

"February 15th, 1886.

" With reference to the time of the death of my father, it was on the
21st November, 1855. He was found dead in the fields between Llantris-
sant Station and Lanclay House, Llantrissant, where he had for many
years resided as house-steward to Lady Mary Cole. [In conversation Mr.
Hutchins has explained that his father was last seen alive, walking from
the station, and apparently in perfect health, about 6 p.m., and that his
body was found soon after 9 o'clock the same evening.] My mother was
in our cottage — Rose Cottage — near Penrice Castle, where we usually
resided during summer. She was preparing to leave just preparatory to
closing the place for the winter. My father left her on the morning of the
day of his death, [having been requested to superintend some work at a
distance].

" At the time when I wrote to you, the circumstances were more vivid
in my memory than at present ; consequently I cannot actually say whether
my mother said, 'Your father appeared to me,' in connection with his-
voice. But this I distinctly remember : my mother said, ' I heard your
father call me by my name, " Mary, Mary," and then I went to the door ;
and I have not been in bed since.' " In conversation, however, it appeared
that Mr. Hutchins is morally certain that the experience was visual as
well as auditory.

112 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

In a later letter, Mr. Hutchins expressed some doubt as to the year of
the occurrence ; and we find from the Register of Deaths that the death
took place on November 21st, 1853, not 1855.

The next case is from Miss Burrows, residing at Hollard Hall,
Stretford Road, Manchester.

" December, 1884.

(277) " I can furnish you with an instance of my name being called
by my mother, who was 18 miles off, and dying at the time. I was not
aware she was ill, nor was I thinking about her at the time, No one here
knew my name, and it was her voice calling, as I was always addressed at
home, ' Lizzie.' I can give you more exact information if you require it.

T , Ti/r- T> •*. "E. BURROWS."

Later, Miss Burrows writes : —

"March 18th, 1885.

"In regard to the voice which I heard call my name on the 19th
February, 1882, I recognised it instantly as being that of my mother. It
was very loud, sharp, and impetuous, as if frightened at something Our
house is detached, very quiet, and the only inmates of the house beside
myself were two gentlemen, aged respectively 58 and 37, and a widowed
daughter-in-law [of the elder gentleman] who had lived with them five
years ; and not one of them knew my Christian name. I was thunder-
struck, and ran out of my room to see if I could account for the voice. /
told the lady the same morning.

" I never saw anything I thought supernatural, and only once before had
anything like a similar hallucination. [This other experience took place
12 years previously, when Miss Burrows and her mother heard some sounds
which seemed to them unaccountable.] My father and mother were
not superstitious people, and a healthier family could not possibly be than
ours."

In answer to inquiries, Miss Burrows adds : —

" I heard the voice call my name on the Sunday morning at 8. My
mother was dying, and quite unconscious, from the Saturday night (the
night before) until the Monday at 8 a.m., when she died."

We find from an obituary notice in the Bury Guardian that Mrs.
Burrows died on Monday, February 20, 1882.

Mrs. Griffiths, of 31, Rosaville Road, Fulham Road, S.W., confirms as.

follows : — ,, -..- , oK.ii.

" March 25th.

" I am very glad to be able to corroborate the statement made by Miss
Burrows, about hearing herself called by name at the time of her mother's,
death. I cannot remember the exact date, but it was a Sunday morning
in February, 1882, and when I came down to breakfast she told me about
it, and said that a voice called ' Lizzy ' distinctly, and it sounded just like
her mother's. The next morning she had the news of her mother's
death ; and she had not any idea that she was ill before, so that it
could not have been fancy.

" H. GRIFFITHS."

It will be seen that Miss Burrows gives February 19th as the date
of her experience, and Mrs. Griffiths mentions independently that the day

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 113

was a Sunday in February. The 19th of February, 1882, fell on a
Sunday. There having been an interval of 24 hours between the
percipient's experience and the death, the case could not be included
in the group which I used in the statistical argument above, Chap.
XIII., § 6.1

We owe the next case to Mrs. Passingham, of Milton, Cambridge.
The narrator is Mrs. Walsh, a sick-nurse whom Mrs. Passingham
knew well, and of whom she says : —

(278) " The fact of her having quarrelled with her favourite sister, and
her dying without a reconciliation, affects her deeply, and she had tears in
her eyes as she told me the story. She declares she was not asleep, and it
was not a dream ; she had only just put out the light and had not got into
bed."

Mrs. Walsh writes to us on May 6th, 1884 : —

" 107, Queen's Crescent, Haverstock Hill.

"On October 24th, 1877, I was in London, and after preparing to
go to bed, I had just extinguished the light, when I heard the voice of my
sister, who was then in Wolverhampton, call me by my name, ' Joanna.'
I instantly answered, ' Yes, Polly/ The voice was low, almost a whisper,
but perfectly clear, and I was so sure that she spoke that I turned to the
part of the room from which the voice came. Again I heard the voice,
and after that, once more, making three times in all.

" When I realised that it could not possibly be my sister, I felt — not
exactly frightened — but awed, and I could not sleep till near morning for
thinking of it. The next day, I heard from my family that they had had
a telegram to say that she was dangerously ill, and some one was to go to
her. Another sister went and found her dead ; and the time of her death
agreed exactly with the time when I heard the voice. She died very
suddenly of mortification, and I had not the least idea she was ill ; also,
we had become estranged from each other, although we were exceedingly
fond of each other, and I think that is the reason she spoke to me.

" JOANNA WALSH."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death took place at
Wolverhampton on the 23rd October, 1877, and not the 24th. The 24th
was probably impressed on Mrs. Walsh's memory, as being the day when
the alarming news reached her.

In reply to inquiries, Mrs. Walsh adds : —

" In answer to your first question I must tell you that at the time of
my sister's death I was with almost entire strangers, and therefore do not
think I mentioned what I had heard to anyone until after I had a letter
saying she was ill, and almost directly afterwards a telegram saying she
was dead. To explain clearly, when I had the letter saying she was ill, I
mentioned it to my sister who brought the letter ; then when I had the-
telegram to say she was dead, I found that the time corresponded exactly
with the time I heard her voice.

" This is the only experience of the kind that I ever had. [This is in
answer to the question whether she had ever had any other hallucination
of the senses.]

VOL. II. I

114 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

" I didn't for one moment doubt whose voice it was, as I immediately
answered by name."

§ 3. I may make the transition from the recognised to the un-
recognised auditory phantasms by an account of several experiences,
occurring to the same percipient, in one of which the voice was
recognised, but not in the others. The witness is Mrs. Wight, of
12, Sinclair Road, West Kensington.

(279) " On five occasions in my life I have heard my Christian name
uttered in a peremptory manner, as if by some one who was in need of my
aid ; and after each occasion I have learnt that a relation had died at a
time closely corresponding to the call. I have never on any other occasion
had any sort of hallucination of the senses whatever.

" The first two occasions of my hearing the call corresponded with the
deaths of two aunts, who had brought me up in my childhood, when my
parents were in India. In these cases I cannot say whether the call was
on the very day of the death or not ; it was certainly within a very few
days.

" The next and most striking occasion was at the time of the death of
my mother, which took place in India, on November 8th, 1 864. I was
living at the time with a cousin, Mrs. Harnett, and her husband, at St.
John's Wood. I was sitting one morning in a room with Mr. Harnett,
when we both distinctly heard a voice utter my name as it seemed from
outside the room. I at once went to look, but it proved that no inmate
of the house had called me. Indeed, there was no one except my cousin
who would have used my Christian name ; and all our search and efforts
to solve the mystery were unavailing. As Mr. Harnett had heard of the
similar occurrence on the death of my aunts, he made a note in writing of
the date. In about three weeks, we received the news of my mother's
death in India, after a week's illness ; and I had Mr. Harriett's assurance,
as well as my own memory, that the date of death corresponded with the
day of the call.

" The next occasion was at Brighton ; and this was the only time when
the voice was recognised. As I awoke in the morning, I heard the voice
of Admiral Wight, my father-in-law, who had died before my mother,
calling me as he frequently had done in life. In a day or so, his widow
wrote and told me of the death of his son, my husband's half-brother. I
had known that he was very ill, but was not in immediate anxiety about
him.

" The fifth occasion was in June, 1876, and was immediately followed
by the news of the death of an infant niece, aged 9 months, whom also I
had known to be ailing. In these last two cases, again, I cannot be sure
whether the days of the call and of the death corresponded ; if not, they
most certainly very nearly did. « gAKAH WIGHT."

[The above account was written out by me, January 31st, 1884, imme-
diately after a long interview with Mrs. Wight, in which every detail was
gone over again and again. I sent the account to Mrs. Wight, who made
a few trifling additions, and signed it.]

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 115

Mrs. Wight adds : — " Mrs. Harriett is in delicate health, and I should
not like to trouble her. When I spoke to her about it, she remembered
the incident."

The strength of this narrative, of course, lies in the third case,
where the correspondence of day was made out to be exact. The
hypothesis that the call on this occasion was a real call outside the
house, though repudiated by Mrs. Wight, cannot be so confidently
rejected by those who realise the difficulty of localising sounds with
precision. Still, the fact of her having on other occasions experienced
impressions of exactly this .form — the commonest of all forms of
sensory hallucination — distinctly supports the view that the experi-
ence was hallucinatory ; and if so, the coincidence of day is a strong
point in favour of the telepathic explanation. I will not pause here
on the fact that in this instance there was a second percipient, as
that topic will be fully discussed in the chapter, on " Collective
Cases."

The next account is from Mr. Goodyear, now of Avoca Villa, Park
Road, Bevois Hill, Southampton, who refers in it to a visual case

quoted in Chap. XII., § 3.

"February 9th, 1884.

(280) " I am very fond of shooting, and one evening I had gone out
with my bag and gun. I was crossing some open meadows, when suddenly
a fearfully shrill cry of ' Tom ' rang in my ears. I instantly answered
loudly, ' Yes, yes,' turning sharply round to see who was in pain, but there
was no one near, and again the scream rang out terribly loud. I answered
again, ' Yes, yes,' and then I heard no more. I retraced my steps, for I
was quite unstrung ; but later on, when it was dark, I went over to see
the keeper in whose woods I was going to shoot, and told him what had
happened. He said, ' Bad news,' and he was right ; for next morning
summoned me to join my bereaved sweetheart, who at that very time,
certainly to within a very few minutes, lost her father. I knew her father
was ill, had been for some 18 months, but was not thinking about them
at the time. I do not know whether these cases are particularly striking,
or whether there are heaps of similar ones, but they are just what
happened, and will for ever live fresh in my memory.

".T. W. GOODYEAR."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death took place on
March 7, 1876, after a 2 years' illness.

Asked if this is the only auditory hallucination that he can recall,
Mr. Goodyear replies in the affirmative.

Asked whether the lady really uttered his name at the time, he
replies, " My wife does not think she uttered my name aloud, though for
several reasons she was thinking intensely of me." He has told me in
confidence special circumstances which caused the mind of the dying man

VOL. II. I 2

116 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

to be much occupied with him, and which caused the mind of his fiancee
to be directed towards him with a special longing for his presence.

The following account was received in October, 1884, from Mrs.
Wilkie, who prefers that her address should not be published.

(281) " In September, 1875, I was in Callander, in lodgings with my
sister and other friends. On the night of the 8th I had gone to bed, but
had only lately put out the light, and was quite wide awake ; when I heard
from apparently just behind the curtain, at the side of the bed, the words
'Oh! Eliza,' (my name) in a mournful tone. I was so much impressed by
the occurrence that I noted down the date next morning, and told my
sister of what I had heard. As time passed on, and I heard from all my
own people and heard of nothing having happened to any of them, I quite
forgot the circumstance.

" Several months after, I heard of the death by drowning, in the Fiji
Islands, of a gentleman, a distant cousin of mine, whom I had known very
well. His relations did not know on which day his death took place,
but it was between the 7th and 9th of September, as they got a letter
from him begun on the 7th, and his partner, who was away from the
place, came home on the 9th, and found him drowned. He had gone out
bathing, it was supposed, and taken cramp.

"E. K. WILKIE."

We find a notice in the Edinburgh Gourant which states that the
death occurred "early in September, 1875."

In answer to the question whether this was the only hallucination of
the senses that she has ever had, Mrs. Wilkie replies, "Yes, the only one."
She believes that the diary in which her experience was at once noted
may still be in existence, but has searched for it in vain. Should she
ever find it, she has promised to show me the entry.

Mrs. Wilkie's sister, Mrs. Rowe, writes to us on December 1, 1884 : —

"South Ste. Marie, Mich., U.S.A.

"In the year 1875, the month of September, I was staying at Callander
with my sister, Mrs. Wilkie. I remember her telling me one morning of
having heard her name spoken the night before, from behind the curtain
at the head of her bed, these words : ' Oh ! Eliza ' ; and this occurred
before she heard of the death of her friend. . . j)ORA H ROWE "

The narrator of the next case is Mrs. Wyld, of 59, Devonshire Road,

Birkenhead.

"May 10th, 1885.

(282) " I would very gladly write the short statement you ask for,
but though to my own mind it is pretty cone usive, still I feel that to
outsiders it is wanting in two important details : (1) I mentioned the
fact of hearing the voice to no one at the time [but see below], and (2)
I could not tell whose voice it was.

" It was on Thursday evening, January 10th, 1884, that I was sitting
alone in the house reading, and it seemed strange, and still not strange, to
hear my name called with a sort of eager entreaty.

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 117

"Shortly after, the others came in. I was leaving for Ellesmere next
day, and in the bustle of departure I thought no more of the circum-
stance. It was only when coming down to breakfast on the Saturday
morning and finding the letter telling of E.'s death, that I instantly
recalled the circumstances, and saw that the time and day corresponded
with when they knew she must have slipped out, and down to the river.

" I wonder I did not associate it with her, for she had written me
some very pitiable letters beforehand. I had not the least idea her mind
was affected. We were school-fellows together for nearly three years and
great friends. " MARY WYLD."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Wyld adds : —

" I never have had a hallucination of the senses at any other time.
It was about 8 o'clock in the evening, I fancy, when I heard the voice.
She was not found till 2 o'clock the next morning when the tide turned on
the river ; she then had been dead several hours, having slipped out, I
fancy, between 7 and 9 the previous evening."

We have verified the date given, and the circumstances of the death,
in two local newspapers. It appears that though the body was not
recovered till early next morning, it was seen, and the shawl that was
round it was even seized and drawn into a boat, at 10 p.m.

Mrs. Wyld afterwards found that she had mentioned her experience
at the time to her mother, who writes to us on March 19, 1886 : —

" Mrs. Wyld was staying with me in Scarborough, when she heard the
voice in which you are interested. She was alone in the house (excepting
servants), and when I returned, an hour after, she related what had seemed
to her peculiar. The date I do not now remember ; but Mrs. Wyld left
Scarborough the next day ; and in two or three days after, she wrote to
tell me of the sad event having taken place that evening.

"M. BALGARNIE."

[The non-recognition here rather tends to strengthen the case, by
increasing the improbability that the hallucination was due to anxiety
about the absent friend.]

The following case is from Miss Harriss, of 25, Shepherd's Bush

Road, W.

"January 25th, 1884.

(283) " Exactly the hour in the afternoon that my mother died, being
out for a long walk in the country with a companion, and having parted
from her to pick wild flowers, I heard myself distinctly called several times.
With a feeling as if some ill were approaching, I looked at my watch
instinctively, and found it half-past 4. I cannot tell why I did so, for I
was then only a school-girl, and calling to my companion I found she had
not addressed me. I dreamed of my mother's death the same night.

"A. HARRISS."

In answer to inquiries, Miss Harriss adds : —

"My mother died on 25th September, 1875. She was in better health
than I had seen her for years when I left her about six weeks before, which
was the reason of my doing so. She died suddenly of heart disease. I
had heard from her only two days before, in good health and spirits. The

118 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

hour of death was stated in the letter and telegram ; I think I have both
still.

" I never had another auditory hallucination. I never had another
dream of death besides that about my mother ; it was very vivid and
distressing. I saw her dying."

The following is an extract, copied by the present writer, from a letter
written to Miss Harriss by her father, and dated September 25, 1875 ; —

" Ashfield.

" MY DEAR ANNIE, — You will be much surprised that your deaf
mamma passed away this afternoon about 3.45, so gently that we could
not believe that she was really gone. . . I think she was not quite
conscious at the time. — Your affectionate father, " J. H. HARRISS."

The friend who was with Miss Harriss at the time writes to us on
July 12, 1884, from 58, Cornwall Gardens, S.W. :—

" The following is an answer to your inquiries regarding my recollection
of a certain incident relating to the death of Miss Harriss' mother. I
remember her coming down one morning much disturbed at a very vivid
dream she had during the night, in which she saw her mother lying dead.
About an hour after she told us, the post came in, bringing Miss Harriss
the news of her mother's death. The previous day Miss Harriss had been
in the woods with me, and came and asked me why I called her, and what
was the matter. On finding I had not, she told me she had been quite sure
some one was calling her, and wanted her. I believe afterwards we were
struck at the curious coincidence of her mother being taken ill that after-
noon, and being actually dead about the time of her dream.

" EDITH DARWIN."

[In conversation, Miss Harriss assured me again that she is positive
that the hour at which she heard the voice was the hour of her mother's
death. If her recollection of the time which she noted by her watch is
correct, this is an instance of exaggeration of correctness, as there was
an interval of three-quarters of an hour.]

Here we can hardly attribute the dream to any excitement caused
by the previous hallucination, since that does not appear to have
suggested her mother to Miss Harriss. If we regard both incidents
as telepathic, and as due to a common cause, the case would be an
interesting instance of " deferred impression " — the dim impulse
which immediately after the death emerged as an unrecognised
phantasm, developing into more definitely " veridical " shape in sleep.

§ 4. And now we come to cases where the auditory impression
was of a complete sentence, conveying either a piece of information
or a direction. The following account is from the Rev. R. H. Killick,
of Great Smeaton Rectory, Northallerton, and is quoted from an
undated letter to the Rev. R. H. Davies, of Chelsea, who tells me, on
November 25th, 1885, that it must have been received "ten or

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 119

twelve years ago." Mr. Killick sent us on April 23rd, 1884, an
almost precisely similar account. We have not been able to obtain
direct confirmation from his wife, who is an invalid ; but he tells us
that her memory confirms his own. The incident happened, however,
rather more than 30 years ago.

(284) " A very much loved little daughter (now married) was with my
family at our vicarage in Wiltshire, and I was in Paris. One Sunday after-
noon, I was sitting in the courtyard of our hotel, taking coffee, when a
sudden thought shot into my mind, ' Etta has fallen into the water.' [In
the later account the parallel clause is — " when all at once I seemed to
hear a voice say, ' Etta has fallen into the pond."'] I should tell you that
we had large grounds, and a fine piece of artificial water, with a grass walk
all round, and a waterfall and cave, &c. — a favourite part. [In the later
account, Mr. Killick adds that this pond " was my horror for the children.
They were never allowed to go near it, except with one of the family."]
I tried to banish the thought, but in vain. I went out into the city and
walked for hours, trying to obliterate the impression in every possible
way, but in vain. I walked till I was too tired to walk any longer,
and returned and went to bed, but not to sleep. I went next day to
the Post-office, hoping for letters; but there were none. I could not
stay in Paris, so I went to the Ambassador's and got a passport for
Brussels.

" In the course of time I had letters saying all were well ; and I
finished my journey, and never spoke of my ' foolish nervousness ' — as I
admitted it to be.

" Some months afterwards I was at a dinner party, and the hostess
said, ' What did you say about Etta, when you heard T

" ' Heard what 1 ' I said.

" ' Oh ! ' said the lady, ' have I let out a secret 1 '

" I said, ' I don't leave till I learn ! '

" She said, ' Don't get me into trouble, but I mean about her falling
into the pond.'

" ' What pond ? '

" < Your pond.'

" ' When 1 '

" ' While you were abroad.'

" I was about leaving, so I said very little more, but hastened home.
I sought our governess, and inquired what it all meant.

• " She said, ' Oh, how cruel to tell you, now it's all over ! Well, one
Sunday afternoon we were walking by the pond, and Theodore said,
" Etta, it's so funny to walk with your eyes shut " ; so she tried, and
fell into the water. I heard a scream, and looked round and saw
Etta's head come up, and I ran and seized her and pulled her out.
Oh, it was so dreadful ! And then I carried her up to her mamma, and
she was put to bed, and soon got all right.'

" 1 inquired the day ; it was the very Sunday that I was in Paris, and
had this dreadful conviction.

" I asked the hour. About 4 o'clock ! The very time, also, that the
unwelcome thought plunged into my mind.

120 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

" I said, ' Then it was revealed to me in Paris the instant it happened ' ;
and, for the first time, I told her of my sad experience in Paris on that
Sunday afternoon. " R. HENRY KILLICK."

Mr. Killick writes us on May 6th, 1884 : —

" As to your queries : you ask was the impression unique in my expe-
rience. I think it was. I cannot remember anything like it. You ask,
was the pond a source of danger, &c. The children were never allowed to
go near it without grown-up people being with them ; it was prohibited ;
and it was quite away from their part of the grounds. We were so strict
and careful that the accident seemed an impossibility. We had never had
any alarm on the subject.

" At that time I had ten children at home ; and yet it was the special
one that had the accident who was present to my mind at that moment.
The voice seemed to say, ' Etta has fallen into the pond.' "

The two expressions " A sudden thought shot into my mind," and
" I seemed to hear a voice say," are perfectly compatible, as expressing
a hallucination only slightly externalised (Vol. I, pp. 480-1) ; but such
descriptions might, no doubt, apply equally to something too inward
to be called hallucination at all ; and in fact a parallel but less
distinct case (No. 80) has been classed among emotional and not
sensory impressions. In other respects, the present narrative reminds
us of Mr. Jukes's case (Vol. I., p. 407), and of Mr. Everitt's case
(Vol. I., p. 409). The sense of a third personality — a messenger —
implied in the form of the message, may be interpreted as the
subjective contribution of the percipient; who projects his impression
in the fashion in which it would most naturally strike his senses, if it
really came to him in a normal way from without.

A still more remarkable case has been supplied to us by Dr.
Nicolas, Count Gone'mys, of Corfu, a member of our Society, from
whose long paper, which was in French, the following account is
abstracted. The first person is retained for the sake of clearness.

"February, 1885.

(285) " In the year 1869, I was Officer of Health in the Hellenic army.
By command of the War Office, I was attached to the garrison of the
Island of Zante. As I was approaching the island in a steamboat, to
take up my new position, and at about two hours' distance from the
shore, I heard a sudden inward voice say to me, over and over again, in
Italian, ' Go to Volterra.' I was made almost dizzy by the frequency
with which this phrase was repeated. Although in perfectly good health
at the time, I became seriously alarmed at what I considered as an
auditory hallucination. I had no association with the name of M.
Volterra, a gentleman of Zante with whom I was not even acquainted,
although I had once seen him, 10 years before. I tried the effect of
stopping my ears, and of trying to distract myself by conversation with

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 121

the bystanders ; but all was useless, and I continued to hear the voice
in the same way. At last we reached land ; I proceeded to the hotel
and busied myself with my trunks ; but the voice continued to harass
me. After a time a servant came, and announced to me that a gentleman
was at the door who wished to speak with me at once. ' Who is the
gentleman?' I asked. ' M. Volterra,' was the reply. And M. Volterra
entered, weeping violently in uncontrollable distress, and imploring
me to follow him at once, and see his son, who was in a dangerous
condition.

"I found a young man in a state of maniacal frenzy, naked, in an
empty room, and despaired of by all the doctors of Zante for the last
five years. His aspect was hideous, and rendered the more distressing by
constantly-recurring choreic spasms, accompanied by hissings, howlings,
barkings, and other animal noises. Sometimes he crawled on his belly
like a serpent ; sometimes he fell into an ecstatic condition on his knees ;
sometimes he talked and quarrelled with imaginary interlocutors. The
violent crises were often followed by periods of profound syncope. When
I opened the door of his room he darted upon me furiously, but I stood
my ground and seized him by the arm, looking him fixedly in the face.
In a few moments his gaze fell ; he trembled all over, and fell on the floor
with his eyes shut. I made mesmeric passes over him, and in half an
hour he had fallen into the somnambulic state. The cure lasted two
months and a half, during which many interesting phenomena were
observed. Since its completion, the patient has had no return of his
malady."

A letter written to Count Gonemys by M. Yolterra, dated Zante,
7th (19th) June, 1885, contains the most complete corroboration of the
above statement in all that concerns the Yolterra family. The letter con-
cludes as follows : —

" Before your arrival at Zante I had no acquaintance with you
whatever, although I have been many years at Corfu as Deputy to the
Legislative Assembly ; nor had we ever spoken together, nor had I ever
said a word to you about my son. As I before said, we had never thought
of you, nor desired your assistance, until I called on you on your arrival as
officer of health, and begged you to save my son.

" We owe his life first to you and then to mesmerism.

" I hold it my duty to declare to you my sincere gratitude, and to
subscribe myself affectionately and sincerely yours,

" DEMETRIO VOLTERRA, Count Crissoplevri.
(Additional signatures) " LAURA VOLTERRA " [M. Volterra's wife].

" DIONISIO D. VOLTERRA, Count Crissoplevri."
" O 0gpa7reuSete Ava?«<no; Bo^reppa." (Anastasio

Volterra, the cured patient).
" C. VASSOPOULOS (come testimonio) "
" DEMETRIO, COMTE GUERINO (confermo)."
" LORENZO T. MERCATI."

The form of the monition here, as the form of the statement in
the former cases, I should attribute to the percipient's shaping
imagination. The narrative, however, will be seen to present one

122 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

peculiarity which we have encountered in no other instance ; l at the
time that the impression was received, the agent and the percipient
were personally unknown to one another. Still, if my surmise be
allowable as to the conditions by "which a line of telepathic com-
munication may be established between persons unconnected by
blood or affection, we might certainly find a likely condition in
such an attitude as that of the supposed agent in this case. We
cannot reasonably suppose that any casual stranger had as good
a chance of being telepathically impressed by M. Volterra as the
person who — though his name and personality may have had no
place in M. Volterra's mind — was yet, by virtue of his special know-
ledge and of his actual approach, more nearly connected than any
one else with the engrossing subject of his thoughts.

The following example, from a clergyman who unfortunately
withholds his name from publication, is very similar, the inward
nature of the sound being again noticeable. But here the agent and
percipient were friends.

(286) "In March, 187—, I went to the curacy of A., and had been, as
well as I remember, about a month there, when the following happened. I
am a native of a town in the North of England, and in my childhood had
a friend of my own age whom I will call C. Our friendship lasted till man-
hood, though our circumstances and walks of life were very different ; and I
had always a great deal of influence over him, insomuch that he would allow
himself to be restrained by me when he would not by others. He became,
towards his 20th year or so, rather addicted to drink, but I always had the
same friendship for him, and would have done anything to serve or help
him.

"In 187 — his family were living at X. (near Z.), and as all my
other old friends had long left the neighbourhood of Z., my native town, I
always used to go to them whenever I visited that part, as I was and am
still on sufficiently friendly terms with them to go at any time without
notice. On the day in question I had been visiting some of the parish-
ioners, and having made an end of this, came to a cross-road of two of the
lanes near the church ; and not only was I not thinking of my friend, whom
I had not heard of for some years, but I distinctly remember what \ was
thinking of, which was whether to go home to my lodgings for my tea,
turning to the left, or whether to trespass on the hospitality of a lady who
lived to the right of the crossing. "When thus standing in doubt, a kind of
shudder passed through me, accompanied by a most extraordinary feeling,
which I can only compare to that of a jug of cold water poured on the nape of
the neck, and running down the spine; 2 and as this passed off, though I can-
not say I hecurd a voice, I was distinctly conscious of the words, ' Go to Z.
by this evening's train,' being said in my ear. There was no one at the

1 A possible exception is case 30, Vol. i., pp. 214-8.
2 Of. case 223, p. 37, and the note thereon.

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 123

time within 100 yards of me. I was not very flush of money just then,
and could not well afford the expense, besides not wishing to absent myself
from duty so soon after taking it up. But it seemed so distinct that I
almost made up my mind to obey it ;. but on announcing the fact to my land-
lady, to whom, of course, I could not tell my true reason, she remonstrated
so earnestly that, coupling this with the affairs of my duty, &c., I did
conclude to disregard it. I could not, however, settle to anything, read,
write, or sit in comfort, till the time was elapsed when I could have caught
the train, when the uneasy, restless feeling gradually went off, and in a
few hours I was ready to laugh at myself.

" Three or four days after, I received the sad news that my friend had
on that day gone down home from London, had been taken ill, and two
days afterwards had, in a fit of temporary insanity, put an end to his
life. I have no doubt in my own mind that had I obeyed the intimation
I might have saved his life ; for I must have gone to their house, no
other in the neighbourhood being available ; and had I found him in the
condition in which he was, you may be very sure he would never have got
out of arm's length of me until all danger was over. I have ever since
reproached myself with it, a,nd have made up my mind that should I ever
have such another experience I will do what is directed, seem it never so
absurd or difficult."

In reply to inquiries, the narrator adds : —

" I was in health just as usual, no better and no worse. I had good
health all the time I was at A., and in particular I never have suffered
from indigestion since I was a child. I have never at any other time
had such a physical sensation, or such a sensation of a voice ; and nothing
has ever happened to me which would lead at all satisfactorily to the
conclusion that any abnormal phenomena were present."

The narrator has privately told us the year of the occurrence, and
the place where the suicide took place ; and we have verified these details
in the Register of Deaths. The event took place later in the year than he
imagined — in November. In conversation, he has explained that " Go to Z."
practically meant the same for him as " Go to these friends," as he would be
quite certain to stay with them. Their place of business was still at Z.
At the time of his experience, his friend was in a very critical condition.

The next case is worth quoting as parallel to the two last, though
it has less evidential force ; for, at this distance of time, we cannot
majte sure that something had not occurred during the preceding
days, that might have half unconsciously suggested to the percipient
the need which he was so strangely impelled to relieve. The account
is from Dr. Joseph Smith, for many years leading medical practitioner
in Warrington, and a class-leader in the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

" November 24th, 1884.

(287) " When I lived at Penketh, about 40 years ago, I was sitting one
evening reading, and a voice came to me, saying, ' Send a loaf to James
Gandy's.' Still I continued reading, and the voice came to me again,
' Send a loaf to James Gandy's.' Still I continued reading, when a third

124 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

time the voice came to me with greater emphasis, ' Send a loaf to James
Gandy's ' ; and this time it was accompanied by an almost irresistible
impulse to get up. I obeyed this impulse, and went into the village,
bought a large loaf, and seeing a lad at the shop door, I asked him if he
knew James Gandy's. He said he did ; so I gave him a trifle and asked
him to take the loaf there, and to say a gentleman had sent it. Mrs.
Gandy was a member of my class, and I went down the next morning to
see what had come of it, when she told me that a strange thing had
happened to her last night. She said she wanted to put the children to
bed, and they began to cry for food, and she had not any to give them ;
for her husband had been for four or five days out of work. She then
went to prayer, to ask God to send them something ; soon after which a
lad came to the door with a loaf, which he said a gentleman gave him to
bring to her. I calculated, upon inquiry made of her, that her prayer and
the voice which I heard exactly coincided in point of time.

" JOSEPH SMITH, M.D."

§ 5. I will now give one case where the sound heard, though vocal,
was not articulate.1 The seemingly direct reproduction of the actual
sound which the agent was making (and therefore hearing) at the
time recalls the first cases of this chapter ; but in the present instance
there was no recognition, which is of course an evidential defect. The
case is one where pros and cons have to be carefully balanced ; it
has been admitted as the experience of a matter-of-fact man, but
would certainly have been rejected had it been that of a nervous or
imaginative woman. The narrator is Mrs. B., who contributed also
case 192, (to which she refers in the first line,) and whose name may

be given to anyone interested in the subject.

" December, 1884.

(288) " Some six years after the above occurrence, in the September
of 1870, my husband was at D. Hall for his holiday. His parents were
then living at Dieppe. He was roused one night by a peculiar moaning, as
if some person or animal was in pain. He got up and went through the
house and out into the gardens and shrubberies, but could see nothing.
He heard the same noise at intervals all that day, but could not find out
the cause. He returned to London next day, to find a telegram summon-
ing him to Dieppe, as his mother was dying. When he got into the house
at Dieppe, the first sound he heard was a repetition of the same noise that
he heard at D. Hall, and he found it was his mother who was making it,
and he learned she had been doing so for two days. She died a few hours
after he arrived. We had no knowledge of Mrs. B.'s illness at the time
my husband heard the noise.

" My husband's parents had been obliged to leave D. Hall under
painful circumstances, and possibly the thoughts of her loved home may
have been paramount with Mrs. B., or it may have been that they flew to

1 The strongest example in our collection that can be thus described is the scream
case, No. 34, to which some "borderland" parallels are given in Vol. i., pp. 403-5. As
possibly a direct reproduction of the agent's sensation, the present experience might be
compared to cases 151 and 342.

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 125

my husband, who was her youngest son. At any rate, my husband always
held that it was his mother's moaning he heard at D. Hall though she was
in France. She was speechless when he reached her, so no solution could
be arrived at. " E. A. B."

We find from a newspaper obituary that the death took place at
Dieppe, on September 12, 1870.

In reply to inquiries, the narrator says : —

" My late husband was alone, at his old home in Norfolk, when he
heard the moaning I told you of. He was shortly after (the same after-
noon, I think) telegraphed for to go to Dieppe to see his mother. He
was quite unaware, till he got the telegram, that she was ill. He returned
to Selhurst, where we were living, and where I was, on his way to Dieppe,
and then told me about this noise. On his return from Dieppe, after his
mother's death, he said, ' You remember my telling you of the moaning I
heard at D. The first sound I heard in the house at Dieppe was the same,
and it was my mother making it.' He further added that he was told she
had made it for a day or two. I am perfectly clear about his hearing it
first at night in the house, and on the following morning in the shrub-
beries, which were a little distance from the house. I never heard either
my husband or his father speak of ever hearing sounds, or seeing anything
before or after the occurrences I have mentioned [i.e., this case and case
192]. They were both matter-of-fact men, and very free from superstitious
ideas. I was a young woman at the time these things took place (I am
only 41 now), so my memory of them is very clear and good. Six weeks
or two months after my husband heard these sounds, we were together at
D., and he showed me the spot in the shrubbery where the sound had been
loudest."

£f the percipient's experience had been confined to the moaning heard
e night, the incident would not have been worth attending to, for
reasons to be immediately adduced. But the continuance of the sound
during the day, and out of doors, makes a decided difference.]

§ 6. We now come to a few specimens of the non-vocal sound-
phantasms — the mere noises or shocks — which are the parallel among
auditory hallucinations to the rudimentary visual hallucinations which
were considered in the last chapter. But the auditory cases need a far
more jealous scrutiny, before we are justified in regarding them as even
probably telepathic in origin. Odd noises, especially at night, are very
common phenomena ; and though the particular cause of them is
often hard to detect, the physical conditions of our indoor life are
prolific of possible causes- Most of us are in constant proximity to
wind that may blow through crevices, and rattle or flap or dislodge
loose parts of our windows and walls and chimneys ; and to water in
pipes or cisterns that may leak, or burst, or may contain bubbling air;
and to slates that may fall; and to wooden furniture and floors
that may crack and creak. And if any one should say that he has
heard a noise which, from its nature or its position, could not be

126 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

accounted for by any such ascertainable cause, he might be reminded
that sounds are the hardest things in the world to localise ; and that no
one who has not given special attention to the subject can realise how
easy it is to mistake the source and character of an auditory impres-
sion.1 Thus, while it is impossible to contend that the " ball of light "
which appeared to Mr. Saxby was a real ball, and impossible therefore
to deny that the coincidence of the hallucination with the death of
some one to whom he was attached was an odd circumstance, it is
quite possible to contend that some unaccountable crash which some-
one has heard was not a hallucination at all, but a real objective sound ;
and the coincidence of such a crash with the death of a near relative
is the less odd in proportion as unaccountable crashes are common
occurrences. Still, unaccountable noises are not of such daily and
hourly occurrence but that a sufficiently large and well-established
group of the coincidences in question might be taken as possible

1 I may mention, as a marked instance of this, a personal experience which I have
again and again repeated. The dripping of a small fountain, heard from some yards off,
produces on my ears the precise effect of a heavy waggon which is being slowly dragged
up a gravelly road at a considerable distance.

The following is probably a case of mistaken localisation. The account is from the
Rev. Edward Bonus, of the Rectory, Hulcot, Aylesbury.

"July, 1882.

"The house is the Rectory of in the county of Wilts. Of the two clergymen

concerned, one is now dead ; the other has read through and signed this account, certify-
ing its accuracy. This matter happened about 20 years ago.

' ' One day, a friend of the then rector came on a visit for a few days, and rode on
horseback. It was winter time. He put his horse into his friend's stables, and the two
clergymen spent the evening together. They went to bed as usual about 11. During the
night the friend heard the steps of a horse very distinctly on the stairs ; was not
frightened, but greatly surprised. He at once got up, lighted his candle, and went down-
stairs, but could see nothing, and now was frightened. He returned to bed, and shortly
again heard the same noise ; again he got up, this time too frightened to go downstairs,
but went to his friend's room. He was asleep, so he roused him, and told him what he
had heard ; they then remained together, leaving the light. Very soon they both heard
the noise in the most certain and distinct manner ; so they both dressed and searched the
house — could see or find nothing ; they then went to the stables, and to their sorrow the
horse was dead.

" They both believed the spirit of the horse had entered the house. The horse died
of heart disease ; it was afterwards examined. Never again, as far as I have ever heard,
was the same man visited by any kind of noise.

" I was intimately acquainted with the two clergymen, and have heard them tell the
story very many times.

"EDWARD BONUS."

"This account is correct. — H. S. L."

What one may surmise to have happened is that the friends heard a sound resembling
heavy steps, and inferred that it was on the stairs. We learn, on inquiry, that " a horse
kicking in the stables could be distinctly heard in the house " ; which suggests the true
nature of the particular horse's "agency " in the matter.

In Morrison's Reminiscences of Sir W. Scott there is an account of the strange sounds
— like the drawing of heavy boards along the new part of the house — which woke Scott
and his wife on the night of the death of their friend, Mr. Bullock, who had lately been
assisting them in the work of building and improving. The coincidence made a great
impression on Scott, which, however, we cannot hold to have been justified. For Lock-
hart's Life contains a letter of Scott's, from which it appears that the same sound had been
heard on the preceding night, when, though "awaked by a violent noise," he only
"fancied something had fallen, and thought no mor^ about it."

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 127

indications of telepathic action, especially as we have the analogy
of rudimentary visual hallucinations to point to.1 Moreover, there is
no doubt that surprising noises and crashes, though often due to
undiscovered external causes, are also a form of purely subjective
hallucination2 — which makes it at least probable, if telepathy be a
reality, that they will also be a form of telepathic hallucination.

The kinds of non- vocal impression which are least likely to be due
to a real but undiscoverable cause in the vicinity are those which are
distinctly 'musical — the sound being produced not in the gliding
random fashion of an ^Eolian harp, but in a series of well-defined
tones. Some examples of literal music will be given in Chap. XVIII.
But I will give here an example where the sound heard was of the
ringing of bells, which is a known form of hallucination.3 The
narrator is a gentleman who does not wish his name and address to be
published, though he has no objection to their being communicated
privately.

"May 28th, 1885.

(289) " In 1862, I sailed to Bombay in one of Dunbar's old frigate-built
ships. I was depressed the whole voyage with an undefined presentiment
of 'bad news from home.' At Bombay I used to get my messmates to go
ashore for letters (a great privilege), even when it was my turn to do so ;
my nervousness was so great. However, we sailed for home, and reached
and left St. Helena, and no black letter was delivered to me.

" Two days after leaving St. Helena I was up aloft doing some trifling
sailor's work with the fourth officer, on the mizen topsail or top gallant
yard, when I heard a bell begin to toll. I said to him, ' Do you hear that
bell tolling ? ' ' No,' he said, ' I hear nothing.' However, my agitation
was so great that I went down and examined both our bells ; and placed
my arm near them, to see if they were vibrating or if any chance rope
was swinging loose and striking them. However, while doing this, I still
heard the boom of the tolling bell, and it seemed far away. I then,
when I had satisfied myself that the sound was not attributable to either
of our ship's bells, went up aloft and scanned the horizon in search of
a sail, but saw none. I then said to my messmates, ' That's my " black
letter." I knew I should have bad news this voyage.'

1 A combination of rudimentary visual with rudimentary auditory hallucinations is
recorded by Madame Guyon (La Vie de Madame Guyon, ecrite par elle-m4me} Paris, 1791,
Vol. iii., p. 170) — in a case, however, which cannot be presented as telepathic, inasmuch
as Madame Guyon was expecting the death of the friend which coincided with the
hallucination. The sight was a glimmer in the room, which caused some little gilt nails
near the bed to glow : the sound was a crash as if all the window-panes in the house had
fallen.

2 See the statistics given in Vol. i., p. 503.

3 For instance, no one is likely to explain as a misinterpretation of real sounds the
case given by Mr. Kinglake in Eotfien, p. 239. In the midst of the desert he heard peal-
ing for ten minutes, as it appeared to him, the familiar bells of his native village. I have
received a very similar example from a lady who heard bells when leading a very solitary
life in a remote part of India — which is one of the 7 cases mentioned in Vol. i., p. 503.
A second apparently telepathic case is No. 344.

128 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES . [CHAP.

" At Falmouth we called for orders ; and there I found that a lady who
filled the place of elder sister to me (my aunt by marriage), and to whose
younger sister I am married now, had been suddenly carried off by illness
— at that time, as near as we could calculate, allowing for the different
longitude. She was young (29), lovely, and most winning in her
manners. I, boy-like, adored her, and she used to say that I was her young
sailor lover ; as my uncle, a captain in the Navy, was her old sailor
lover.

" I am 40 years old now, and have been through dangers of all sorts,
in imminent danger of death many times, but I have never had a pre-
sentiment since. After nearly 25 years I can still remember the boom,
boom, of that old bell in the Manx churchyard, which I heard in latitude 14
S., or thereabouts."

Asked whether he had ever experienced a hallucination on any other
occasion, the narrator replied : —

" I have never suffered from any hallucinations. I have led an active
life, including much loneliness, being for weeks together in the jungles
shooting and surveying alone, save for native servants, and far from white
men, and during all that time my brain never played me any tricks."
Later, he wrote : — " I have not been a dreamer, fool, or a mystic, but a
hard-working, clear-headed man of business. I tell you all this, not in a
boasting spirit, but simply to prove, so far as possible, that I am not a
likely subject for ' illusions ' or ' hallucinations.' You must remember that
this occurred when I was a careless youngster of 17, on my first voyage to
sea. I could not account for it then ; nor can I now. The impression is
as vivid as ever."

Asked whether any bells would have been ringing at the time of the
lady's death, he says : —

" Yes. Malen Church bell would have been tolling in Castletown at
that time, for the passing bell or for the funeral. I never asked whether
the passing bell was rung, but it is a common habit in the Isle of Man to
toll the church bell immediately after the decease of any one of some
social importance. I feel sure it was done in this case ; we were so well
known there. I mean it is done for the gentry, and such of the farmers
and shopkeeping class who care to pay for it.

" I may add that the lady who died was inexpressibly dear to me, being
more like a sister than an aunt."

The name of the lady was given to us in confidence, and also the date
of her death ; and we have verified this date by reference to an Isle of
Man newspaper. The day proved to be a Sunday. This was pointed out
to our informant, in case he might be able to recall anything which would
point to a Sunday as the day of his experience. He replied : —

" I cannot well remember the day, but I think that, from what I do
remember, it was a Sunday. I was probably stowing the mizen top-
gallant sail, or doing some necessary work up aloft ; but I remember that
when I went down to look at the bells the ship was still, and I don't
remember any work going on. I am, however, not certain on this matter."

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 129

If this case was telepathic, it must remain doubtful whether the
form of the impression represented the last sensations or ideas of
the dying person, or was a piece of death-imagery supplied by the
percipient, as illustrated in several of the visual cases of Chap. XII.
The preceding distress and nervousness were probably subjective, but
can scarcely be regarded as the cause of the hallucination.

When we pass from musical impressions to noise proper, the
degree of oddness and unaccountableness in a sound is a point which
it is very hard to judge of from description. The reader may form
his own opinion of the following account, received from Mrs. Samuda,
of Shipton Court, Chipping Norton. I do not number it as an
evidential case.

" If the details of what occurred to me (and which I believe to have
been purely accidental) can be of any service to your Society, I will with
pleasure describe them ; but in doing so I must beg that you will
thoroughly understand that I do not in the least believe in any of these
coincidences, and at the time was much amused when I was told that
the sounds I heard were death- warnings. On the 5th of October, 1878,
about 3 o'clock in the morning, I was suddenly aroused by three distinct
loud knocks exactly over the head of my bed. At the time I was ill,
and the nurse was sleeping in my room. She also distinctly heard the
sounds. The first thing the next morning, I received a telegram to say
my grandfather, Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., had died suddenly the night
before at 8 o'clock. When I told the nurse of the telegram, she instantly
said the three knocks I had heard were a death warning.

"On the 20th March, 1879, I received a letter from my mother, saying
that my brother, Rupert Markham, had been ill, but was now going on quite
well again, and that I need not be the least anxious. On the morning of
the 21st, about 3 o'clock in the morning, I distinctly heard the same
three knocks ; my husband also heard them. At 10 o'clock that morning
I received a telegram desiring me to come immediately, as my brother
was dying. When I arrived at Melton Mowbray, 9.30 p.m., my brother
was just dead.

"About the 2nd of May, 1879, at 6 o'clock in the morning, my hus-
band and I both heard the same three knocks, and were so much impressed
at this occurring for a third time that he instantly made a note of it.
At that time my eldest brother had just started for Zululand, so we much
feared something might have happened to him. For three weeks after this
we heard nothing, then a letter came saying my brother was dangerously
ill, but shortly afterwards we heard by telegram that he was perfectly
well again. I tell you this third instance to show you that there cannot
possibly be anything but a mere chance in these accidents being repeated.'7 •

[The coincidence in the first case was probably closer than is repre-
sented ; for all the newspaper accounts give the date of Sir F. Grant's death
as Saturday, October 5th ; the Times and the Leicester Chronicle say "Satur-
day morning" ; and the Daily Telegraph says, " early on Saturday morning."

The Leicester Chronicle confirms the date of death in the second case.]

VOL. II. K

1£0 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [CHAP.

Mrs. Samuda does not say whether she herself regards the
knocks as hallucinations, or as objectively caused. If they were the
former, then the question of " belief in these coincidences " — i.e., the
question whether they are due to "accident, or to telepathy — must (as
we have seen) be judged by the application of the doctrine of
chances on a basis of very wide statistics ; and certainly will not be
decided in favour of accident by the fact that the percipient has
observed a coincidence in two cases and not in a third. But the coin-
cidence with the death was not very close in the second case, and
possibly not in the first ; and real sounds due to some defect in
the house or furniture may have • happened to be a little louder
than usual on these occasions, and perhaps afterwards became
exaggerated in memory. The fact that the experience was in each
case shared by a second person is strongly (though, as we shall see
later, not decisively) in favour of this view.

The following case has more weight. The account was written
down on June 2nd, 1876, by Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, from the
dictation of the percipient, the late Miss Vaughan, of 6, Chester
Place, Regent's Park, N.W.

(290) " In the autumn of 1856, Mrs. D. was lying dangerously ill,
near Windsor ; when I received a letter on Friday from her daughter, who
had been invited to the marriage of Mr. Cox with Miss Alderson, telling
me that as their mother was rather better, they thought they might come
up to the marriage on Tuesday if I could give them a bed. On
the Saturday night I went to bed at my usual hour, 12 o'clock, but
did not go to sleep for some time ; when I was suddenly startled by
three sets of three extraordinary loud knocks, like strokes of a hammer on
an empty box, at my bed head, followed immediately by a long loud
cry of a woman's voice, which seemed to die away in the distance. I
called my maid instantly, and begged her to look out of the window, and
see if there was anyone in the street. She opened the shutters, threw
up the window, and said there was no one ; that I must have been
dreaming ; it was quite late. I said ' No, it had not yet struck 1,' and
sent her to look at the clock ; she returned, and said it wanted 10 minutes
to 1. I said the noise must have come from the room adjoining mine,
in the next house. She said the house was empty ; but this I could not
believe, so I sent her early on Sunday morning to see. She came back,
saying the windows were all shut, and she had knocked for some time in
vain. On the following morning I sent her to the person in Albany Street
who had charge of the house, thinking somebody must have slept in it on
Saturday night. The person in charge said this could not be the case,
as she had the key ; but she went to look, and came to tell me that no one
could possibly have got in.

" In a very few hours afterwards I received a letter from one of the
Miss D.'s, to tell me that their mother became suddenly worse on

xv.] OCCURRING TO A SINGLE PERCIPIENT. 131

Saturday morning, and had died in the course of the night. Some time
subsequently, I had an opportunity of seeing the nurse, and she told me
that Mrs. D. had exactly died at a quarter before 1 on Sunday morning,
uttering a loud cry at the moment of her death. She had just been giving
her a cup of beef tea, and had replaced it on the mantelpiece, where there
was a clock, on which she observed the hour. I had thought that the
whole must have proceeded from the next house.

" Mrs. D. had been a very intimate friend of mine ; I know I was
much in her thoughts, and a few days before her death she had said she
hoped, now she was a little better, to be well enough to see me."

We find from the Register of Deaths that Mrs. D.'s death took place
on a Sunday — October 26th, 1856.

In November, 1876, Mr. H. Wedgwood read the account of Miss
Vaughan's vision to Miss E. T., a common friend of Miss Vaughan's and
Mrs. D.'s, whom Mr. Wedgwood has known all his life. She was staying
with her sister at Hastings at the time of the incident, and received a
letter from Miss Vaughan telling them of Mrs. D.'s death, and of her
having come to her. Miss T. was greatly interested in this intelligence,
and hurried up to London, where she heard from Miss Vaughan the story
exactly as narrated by Mr. Wedgwood, down to the news of Mrs. D.'s
death ; but Miss Yaughan had not then seen the nurse, and was con-
sequently ignorant of the precise agreement in time between the fact of
her outcry at the moment of death and Miss Vaughan's hearing the
scream. Two or three months after, Miss Vaughan told her what she had
heard from the nurse.

Miss T. has seen this statement, and appends the words : " Quite
correct.— E. H. T. November 5th, 1883."

Mrs. Vaughan, of the Deanery, Llandaff, writing on June 10, 1886,
sends us an account of the occurrence which differs from Miss Vaughan's
only in one or two trifling details, and adds : " Miss Vaughan often spoke
of it to us."

The fact of the scream, though it seems to have corresponded with
an actual cry of the supposed agent, could not be pressed ; as such
sounds are not uncommon in London streets at night, and the loud-
ness and apparent closeness of the cry may have been exaggerated.
But the knocks in this case, if correctly described, seem less easy
to explain, except as hallucination ; and the hallucination (if the
present class be admitted at all) would have a primd facie claim to
be considered telepathic — the tie of affection between the two parties
being a strong one, and the coincidence extremely close. Technically,
the incident ought perhaps to be classed among " borderland " cases ;
but this particular form of hallucination .does not seem to be specially
connected with the moments that immediately precede or follow
sleep; and the percipient must apparently have been wide awake
before the sounds ceased. A few more examples of the non-vocal sort
will be found among the " collective " cases in Chap. XVIII. ; others,

VOL. II. K 2

132 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES. [CHAP.

in view of the evidential weakness of the class, are relegated to the
Supplement.

I will conclude this chapter with a case of a phantasm which,
though located in the ear, perhaps rather concerned the sense of touch
than that of hearing. If it was telepathic, it is a remarkably clear
instance of the direct reproduction of the agent's sensation in the
percipient's consciousness.1 The account is from Mrs. Arthur Severn,

of Brantwood, Coniston.

"1883.

(291) " Years ago, in Scotland, at my own home, I was in the drawing-
room with my mother and aunt ; the latter was busy writing at a table in the
middle of the room, facing my mother, who was on a sofa sewing, while I
was quietly amusing myself in my own way. It was all very quiet, when
suddenly I was much startled by my mother, who gave a scream and threw
herself back on the sofa, putting both her hands up to cover her ears,
saying, ' Oh, there's water rushing fast into my ears, and I'm sure either my
brother, or son James, must be drowning, or both of them ! ' My aunt
Margaret jumped up, and was rather angry and said, ' Catherine, I never
heard such nonsense, how can you be so foolish ! ' My aunt seemed vexed
and ashamed it should happen before me, for I was very frightened, and
remember it all so vividly. My poor mother cried, saying, ' Oh, I know
it's true, or why would this water keep rushing into my ears ? '

" Alas ! it proved too true, for very soon I could see people running very
hard towards the bathing-place, and I remember the shudder that then ran
through me, and the hope that my mother would not look out of any of
the windows. Soon my uncle came hurrying to the house very white and
distressed ; all he could say was, ' hot blankets ! ' but it was too late —
poor James was drowned. He was 21 years old, and my mother's eldest
child. Both the other witnesses of this scene are dead.

" JOAN R. SEVERN."

[The narrator's brother, James Agnew, was drowned while bathing in
the river Bladnoch. The date, as we find from a copy of an inscription in
Wigtown churchyard, was June 8, 1853.]

It is to be noted that the narrator here was herself the percipient
in the still more remarkable case of apparently direct transference,
quoted in Vol. I., p. 188.2

1 Other drowning cases, on the other hand, if correctly described, afford an equally
clear illustration of the percipient's independent investiture of the id_ea transferred, the
impression being of the dripping of water — a sound which would be neither in the agent's
ears nor in his thoughts. See, e.g., cases 513 (1) and 528 ; and compare the account of the
Breton tradition in the Dictionnaire Historique et Gtographique de la Province de Bretagne,
by J. B. Og^e (Edition of 1845), Vol. i., p. 374.

2 Other possible instances of hereditary or family susceptibility to telepathic influence
are cases 14 and 15 ; the cases mentioned in Vol. i., p. 424, note ; cases 310, 497, and
617 ; cases 413, 111, 161, 464 ; cases 232 and 561 ; cases 450 and 462 ; cases 421 and 503 ;
cases 422 and 586 ; cases 496 and 532 ; case 562 ; and several of the collective cases in
Chap, xviii., §§ 2 and 6, and in the Supplement, Chap. ix. I may add that my collection
of casual subjective hallucinations of the sane includes 4 cases where a parent and child
have been affected at different times. In one of these cases (received from Mrs. Freese,
of Granite Lodge, Chislehurst) the son's vision nearly reproduced the one whichhis mother
had experienced years before. Another instance of hereditary susceptibility to halluci-
nations is mentioned by Abercrombie ; see Vol. i., p. bcxxii.

XVI.]

CHAPTER XVI.

TACTILE CASES AND CASES AFFECTING MORE THAN ONE OF THE
PERCIPIENT'S SENSES.

§ 1. IN the chapter on "borderland " cases, and again in Chapter XII.,
when illustrating the development of hallucinations by the per-
cipient's own imagination under the stimulus of a telepathic impulse,
I quoted several instances in which two of his senses played a part —
as where an impression of sound preceded and led up to the visible
phantasm. And I have mentioned (pp. 23-4) that the proportion
of the telepathic cases in which the experience assumes such a
complex or multiple form seems decidedly larger than obtains among
the purely subjective hallucinations of the sane. The present chapter
will contain those remaining telepathic instances which belong to
seasons of complete waking consciousness. In some of these, as it
happens, the sense of touch is involved; and I may take the oppor-
tunity of saying a necessary word or two on affections of that sense.
Among purely subjective hallucinations of the sane, those of touch
seem to be rarer even than those of sight, and much rarer than
those of hearing. My large collection includes only 68 examples (a
few being cases of repeated experiences), of which 43 were of touch
only, 8 were associated with a visual hallucination, 13 with an auditory
hallucination, while 4 concerned all three senses. The canvassed group
of 5705 persons (pp. 7, 8) yielded only 23 distinct experiences of
the sort ; and of these 23, one occurred to a person who was out of
health, one in association with a visual, and two in association with
an auditory hallucination. Moreover, in many of the cases where touch
alone has been concerned, it is easy to suppose that the sensation t
was caused by an involuntary muscular twitch — an instance is even
on record where a hallucination of sight and sound took its origin in an
objective sensation, caused by the momentary cramp of a muscle1 —

1 Paterson's paper in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal for Jan., 1843.

134 TACTILE CASES AND CASES AFFECTING [CHAP.

so that the number of genuine tactile hallucinations would be even
smaller than appears. It will not surprise us, then, to find that
telepathic affections of this sense — or what might reasonably be
adduced as such — are also rare. A couple of cases have been already
quoted ; in neither of which did the touch suggest any human con-
tact, while each included a peculiarity beyond the mere touch — the
first that of pain (Vol. I., p. 188), and the second probably that of
sound (p. 132, above). We have, however, a few cases where the
mere touch is alleged to have been more or less distinctive,1 of which
I will quote here one specimen. Mr. J. 0. Harris, of Wellington,
New Zealand, proprietor of the New Zealand Times and New
Zealand Mail, writes : —

"July 6th, 1885.

(292) "My wife had an uncle, a sea captain, who was very fond
of her as a child, and often, when at home at London, used to take
her on his knee and stroke down her long thick hair. She, with
her parents, went from London to Sydney, and her uncle pursued his
avocation in other parts of the world. Some 3 or 4 years afterwards, she
was upstairs, dressing for dinner, and had her hair loose upon her
shoulders ; suddenly she felt a hand placed on the top of her head, and
brought down smartly along her hair on to her shoulders. Startled, she
turned round and exclaimed, ' Why, mother, how could you frighten me
so ? ' for she assumed her mother had played a little joke on her. There
was no one there however. When she related the circumstance at the
dinner-table, a superstitious2 friend present advised them to make a note
of the day and date. This was done. In due course came the news of
the death of her uncle, William, on that day — allowing for difference of
longitude at about the time she felt the hand on her head.

"J. CHANTREY HARRIS."

The following is Mrs. Harris's own account of her experience : —
" Hill Street, Wellington, New Zealand.

"December 5th, 1885.

" I regret extremely that, anxious as we are to assist, in however
small a degree, the cause of science, it is not in my power to give con-
firmatory evidence of my own little experience. Of the friends who were
associated with me at the time, but one is living, and she lives away in
Queensland. The notes were not considered of sufficient consequence to
be kept ; and neither mourning card nor obituary notice are available.
Consequently my account cannot, as I quite understand, have much value,
uncorroborated as it is. However, as a matter of courtesy, I will make
my statement, feeling well assured that you will accept it as authentic.

1 In 11 out of the 43 cases just mentioned, the touch is alleged to have been recognised,
and in 7 of these the person whose presence was suggested was dead. There is no difficulty
in regarding such cases as " after-images " ; but see Vol. i., p. 512, note.

2 We are bound to accept Mr. Harris's description ; and can only wish that supersti-
tion oftener took the form, as here, of prompting the only scientific course.

XVL] MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENTS SENSES. 135

" The occurrence happened so long ago that, while the incident is fresh
enough to my memory, the precise date (never carefully noted) has
escaped it. The year was 1860, the month April. I was a young girl,
standing before the dressing-table in my bedroom, arranging some detail
of my toilet. It was about 6 p.m., at that time of year, twilight, when
suddenly a hand was placed upon my head, passed down my hair, and fell
heavily on my left shoulder. Startled at the unexpected touch, I turned
quickly to remonstrate with my mother for entering so quietly, when, to
my surprise, I found no one there. On the instant my mind flew to
England, whither my father had gone the preceding January, and I
thought ' something has happened,' though what I could not define.

" I went downstairs, and related my fright to the family. In the
course of the evening, Mrs. and Miss W. came in, and, on commenting
upon my paleness, were told about the matter. Mrs. W. immediately said,
' Put down the date, and see what comes of it.' This was done ; and the
incident soon ceased to trouble us, though the family awaited with some
anxiety my father's first letter from home. It came in due time, and told
how, when he reached England, he found his brother Henry seriously ill —
dying, in fact. As a child I had been his little favourite, and in death
my name was the last word he uttered.

" Upon comparing dates, and allowing for difference in longitude, we
found that the time of my uncle's death coincided exactly with that of
my strange experience. I recollected, too, that it was a familiar habit
of my uncle to stroke my hair with a caressing touch. My mother, who
resides with me, is the only person who can confirm the story, and she
appends her signature to this, in confirmation thereof.

"ELIZABETH HARRIS."
(Attesting signature) " ELIZABETH BRADFORD."

In answer to the question whether she has ever had a hallucination of
the senses on any other occasion, Mrs. Harris replies : —

" This is the only experience of the kind in my life."

We find from the Thame Gazette and the Oxford Chronicle that Mrs.
Harris's uncle died on May 12, (not in April,) 1860, aged 51.

[The coincidence here seems to have been very close, if we can trust
Mrs. Harris's memory that a written note of the date of her impression
was compared with the date of the death. But it will be seen that she
did not at the time associate her experience with her uncle's former mode
of touching her.]

But the more conclusive cases of recognition are naturally those
where a second sense has been concerned ; the element of touch being
then a natural enough feature in a highly developed phantasmal
impression. In the following case the second sense involved is that .
of hearing. The account is in the words of Mrs. Stone, of Shute Haye,
Walditch, Bridport ; it is attested, as will be seen, by the percipient. •

(293) "A well-known inhabitant of Walditch, a little village near
Bridport, Dorset, died suddenly last May, 1881 . We were all very sorry, and
felt much for those she had left. She was an honest, industrious woman,
a good, affectionate wife and mother. She had been somewhat ailing for

136 TACTILE CASES AND CASES AFFECTING [CHAP.

some time past, but there was no special cause for alarm, and my daughter
saw her engaged (she was a washerwoman) in her usual occupation the
day before her death. From her husband I heard the following narrative
of facts, which he received from his son, when the latter came down to his
mother's funeral : —

" ' My wife latterly was uneasy about one of her sons, Joseph Gundry,
who is a pointsman on the Midland Railway, and had risen to an office of
much responsibility. Not hearing from him for some time, she feared that
he had fallen ill, and did not like to write till there should be no longer
any cause for alarm. There was, in fact, such a press of business that he
could not find time to write. On the night, or rather morning, of his
mother's death, he had the night-duties, and, there being no train about,
he sat down for a short time, leaning his arms on a table. He was not
asleep and had hardly settled himself, when a hand was placed on his
shoulder, and a voice said distinctly : ' Joe, your mother wants you.' As
far as we can ascertain this was about the time that his mother passed
away. He did not recognise the voice, and saw no one. As there is no
post from Bridport that, could reach him under two days, his father tele-
graphed. When the telegram was brought to him, he said, " I know what
it is, my mother is dead." '

The percipient writes : —

" Hay Street, Sawley, Derby.

"February 16th, 1883.

" I have perused the attached, [i.e., thaabove account] and find it to be
substantially correct. I attest the accuracy of the report as printed, and
I am prepared to bear it out. " JOSEPH GUNDRY."

Mr. Gundry further informs us that he has never on any other occasion
experienced any sort of hallucination of the senses.

In the next example the sense of sound is again concerned. The
case might be added to those quoted in Chapter XII., § 3, of the
gradual development of telepathic hallucinations, leading finally to
recognition. The narrator is the Rev. P. H. Newnham, late Vicar
of Maker, Devonport, already so often mentioned.

(294) "In July, 1867, 1 was living at Bournemouth, and was temporarily
acting as chaplain to the Sanatorium there. A very sad case came in
unexpectedly of a young man in the last stage of consumption. He was
so ill that we could not take him into the institution, but accommodated
him in lodgings. I visited him for some time, as his clergyman. Then the
chaplain returned home ; and I myself left for my holiday. I did not
expect to see the young man again ; but, to my surprise, on my return
home, on September 21st, I found he was still alive ; and the doctors said
he might yet live some weeks.

" On Sunday, September 29th, I had been reading prayers at the
chapel in the Sanatorium, and the chaplain preached at the evening
service. It was near the end of the sermon, and about 8 o'clock, not
later, but I cannot tell to five minutes. I suddenly felt a firm, but
gentle touch on my right shoulder. So impressed was I with the instinct

xvi.] MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENTS SENSES. 137

that this indicated the presence of some unseen being, that I at once
asked ' Is it S.? ' (the Christian name of a pupil of mine, who died in
1860). The answer came back at once, in the clear tones of the inner
voice,1 ' No, it's William.' I have no recollection of anything more.

" After service was over, I inquired about my young friend, and was
told that the matron had been sent for to him, as he was suddenly taken
much worse. Next morning I heard that he died about 8.10. It was,
therefore, about 10 minutes before his actual death that I experienced the
communication. I may add that I had not been thinking specially
about him, that I had not visited him, or received any message from
him since my return, and that I had no reason whatever to expect his
speedy decease.

"P. .H. NEWNHAM."

An obituary notice in the Lymington and Isle of .Wight Chronicle
confirms the fact that William Bryer died on September 29, 1867.

Mrs. Newnham corroborates as follows : —

" I perfectly remember my husband telling me, on his return home
from the service at the Sanatorium Chapel, of the touch and voice, and
saying he felt sure William was dead. He did not hear of his death till
the next morning. u M> NEWNHAM.,,

[Mr. Newnham seems to have a slight predisposition to subjective
auditory phantasms, but has never experienced a similar vivid hallucina-
tion of touch.]

This can hardly be regarded as a subjective experience due to
anxiety. Mr. Newnham had, no doubt, a certain emotional interest
in the young man who died, and was aware of his critical condition.
But if his hallucination had been a purely subjective one, caused by
the latent emotional idea, one would certainly have expected that it
would have taken a form suggestive of William ; whereas Mr.
Newnham actually connected it at first with a different person. So
that the non-recognition in this case tends to increase the probability
of the telepathic explanation (cf. case 282 above).

In the next case, the second sense involved is that of sight. The
narrator is Mrs. Randolph Lichfield, of Cross Deeps, Twickenham.
Her husband was precluded from attesting the account in writing, by

a painful affection of the hand.

" 1883.

(295) " I was sitting in my room one night, before I was married, close
before a toilet-table, on which the book I was reading rested ; the table
fitted into the corner of the room, and the wide glass on it reached nearly
to the ceiling, so that any one in the room could be seen full length. The
book I was reading was not at all calculated to affect my nerves, or excite

1 See Vol. i., pp. 480-1.

138 TACTILE CASES AND CASES AFFECTING [CHAP.

my imagination in any way. I was perfectly well, in good spirits, and
nothing had occurred since receiving my morning's letters, to remind me of
the person concerned in the strange experience you have asked me to relate.

" My eyes were fixed on my book, when suddenly I felt,1 but did not
see, some one come into my room. I looked straight before me into the
glass to see who it was, but no one was visible. I naturally thought that
my visitor, seeing me deep in my book, had gone out again, when, to my
astonishment, I felt a kiss on my forehead — a lingering, loving pressure.
I looked up, without the least sensation of fear, and saw my lover standing
behind my chair, stooping as if to kiss me again. His face was very white
and inexpressibly sad. As I rose from my chair in great surprise, before
I could speak, he had gone, how I do not know ; I only know that, one
moment I saw him, saw distinctly every feature of his face, saw the tall
figure and broad shoulders as clearly as I ever saw them in my life, and
the next moment there was no sign of him. For the first minute I felt
nothing but surprise ; perplexity expresses better what I mean ; fear, or
the idea I had seen a spirit, never entered my mind ; the next sensation
was that there must be something the matter with my brain, and a feeling
of thankfulness that it had not conjured up some terrific vision, instead of
an agreeable one. I remember praying that I might not fancy anything
that would frighten me.

" The next day, to my great surprise, there was not my usual morning's
letter from him ; four posts came in and no letter ; all the next day, no
letter. I naturally objected to the novel feeling of finding myself
neglected, but should not have thought of letting the neglector know it, so
would not write to inquire the cause of his silence. On the third night
— still no letter all day— as I was going upstairs to bed, thinking of
something totally unconnected with R., as I put my foot on the top stair,
I felt, suddenly, but most intensely, that he was in my room, and that I
could see him just as I had done before. For the first time came the fear
that something had happened to him. I knew well how intense his desire
to see me would be, and thought — ' Could it have been really that I saw
him the other night ? '

" I went straight to my room, convinced I should see him ; there was
nothing to be seen. I sat down and waited, and the sensation that he was
there, and striving to speak to me, and to make me see him, became
stronger and stronger. I waited till I became so sleepy I could not sit
up any longer, and went to bed and to sleep. By the first morning's post
I wrote and told him I feared he must be ill, as I had not had a letter for
three days. I said not one word of what I have told you in this. Two
mornings after, I had a few lines, shockingly written, to tell me he had
hurt his hand out hunting, and could not hold a pen till that day, but was
in ' no danger.' It was not till a few days after, when he could write
distinctly, that I knew the whole truth.

" This is it. He had been riding an Irish hunter, a splendid horse
across country, but a most vicious creature. This horse was so used to
getting rid of any one he found on his back, if he objected to their
presence there, and had such a variety of methods of doing so, throwing

1 If, as is probable, tins feeling was due to a faint auditory hallucination (Vol. i., p.
528, second note), the case would be one of the rare instances of hallucination of three
senses. Compare Nos. 185, 306, 313, 504, 513 (1), 569.

XVL] MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENT'S SENSES. 139

grooms, huntsmen, any one, when the fit seized him, and when he found
no amount of rearing, kicking, no bolting, and stopping suddenly, no
' buck-jumping ' would unseat my fiance, and that he had at last found his
master, he became desperate. He stood still for an instant, then rushed
across the road backwards, reared perfectly straight, and pressed his rider's
back against the wall. The crush and pain were so intense, R. thought it
must be death, and remembered saying, as he lost consciousness, ' May,
my little May ! don't let me die without seeing her again.' It was that
night he had bent over and kissed me. He turned out not to be really
injured, though, of course, in frightful pain, and his hand could not
possibly hold a pen. The night I felt so suddenly and so certainly that I
should see him, and, when I did not, felt so thoroughly he was there and
trying to let me know it, he was at the time worrying himself about not
writing to me, and wishing intensely that I might feel there was some
reason for his silence.

" I told my mother [since deceased] all, just as I have told you, and
she advised me to say nothing about his supposed visit to me till he was
quite strong and well again, and I could do so personally. When he came
to see me afterwards, I made him tell the whole of his account before I
mentioned one word of my strange experience of those two nights.

" 1 have just read this over to him, and he vouches for my having
exactly described his share of this strange experience."

§ 2. The remaining cases involve the senses of sight and hearing.
The following account is from the Rev. J. A. Haydn, LL.D., Rector of
Nantenan, Co. Limerick, and was first communicated by him to the
Oxford Phasmatological Society.

" Nantenan Glebe, Askeaton.

"June 18th, 1883.

(296) " I beg to submit to your Society the following brief narrative,
extracted from my diary.

" Nine miles from my residence, in the town of Adare, Co. Limerick,
lived a gentleman, named Phillips, and his wife. They were on terms of
unusually close and affectionate intercourse with myself and my family;
they frequently driving over to spend the day here, and we as frequently
returning the visit.

"On Thursday, October 16th, 1879, the accouchement of Mrs. Phillips
took place ; it had been anticipated with some anxiety by her medical
attendant ; but we were gratified to learn by a letter from Mr. Phillips
that the event had passed without evil consequences, and that his wife
was rapidly recovering.

"Matters were in this condition when, at 10 o'clock on the night of
the ensuing Wednesday, October 22nd, I went to bed as usual. I slept in
a little bedstead in an angle of my study downstairs ; all the members of
the household sleeping in the upper story. I had seen the doors fastened^
and the children and servants were all in bed. As is my custom, I was
reading in bed, when, in the midst of the hitherto unbroken silence, I
heard quick, light footsteps, evidently those of a female, proceeding along
the hall, as if entering from the front door, and then traversing the
passage that leads to my study door.

140 TACTILE CASES AND CASES AFFECTING [CHAP.

" Arrived immediately outside, they seemed to me to resemble those of
a person in the dark, vaguely trying to find where the door was. Under
the full impression that my wife had come downstairs, I called her name
loudly, and asked what was the matter. While I spoke, the noise ceased,
but it recommenced immediately ; and while I stared at the door, I both
heard and saw the handle turned halfway round,1 and then let go, as if
the person entering had changed her mind. Surprised and alarmed, I
sprang up with the lamp in my hand and opened the door. All was
perfectly still and silent without. None of the household had stirred, nor
was any door opened that had been closed.

" I returned to bed, and some few minutes after I heard the clock
strike 11. No further disturbance occurred. This happened, observe, on
Wednesday night, October 22nd, at a little before 11 o'clock.

" On Friday morning I got a letter from Canon O'Brien, the rector of
Adare, to say that Mrs. Phillips had died on Thursday morning. I
immediately set out to Adare to see my bereaved friend, and found him
almost beside himself with grief. Mrs. Phillips, while in other respects
advancing to convalescence, had suddenly been seized with scarlatina,
which had proved fatal. Thinking it might ease my poor friend to tell me
the sad details, I encouraged him to speak on the subject. He complained,
as one of his bitterest griefs, that for the last night of her life his wife was
delirious, and did not know him or her mother, who was present. ' She
sank gradually on Wednesday,' he said, ' and lost her senses on that
night — raving about persons and places that had been familiar to her,
and evidently fancying herself actually present in distant spots. You were
one of the first-mentioned ; she imagined that she was in your house
speaking to you. I quietly asked whether he happened to have any idea
as to what hour this was at, when he answered, ' A few minutes before 11,
as I distinctly remember looking at my watch.'

"Thus, at the very time that I, nine miles away, heard the un-
accountable noises, my dying friend was speaking and acting as if she
were in my presence. It seems impossible not to connect the circumstances.

"JOHN ARMOUR HAYDN."

In answer to our inquiry whether he had ever experienced any other
hallucination, Mr. Haydn replies, " My senses have never on any occasion
played me false." He further explains : —

" The facts of the narrative and its dates are extracted from the
diary, but not the actual language. Those facts were written by me in
my diary immediately after their occurrence ; my custom, as a general
rule, being to record the events of any given day 011 the following morning.
The actual extracts I can give, if required, and should be happy to do so.
The story, as told in the printed slip [i.e., the above account], is accurate in
all particulars, and most utterly reliable. I may add, and deeply regret to
do so, that poor Phillips himself has since died."

The following are the verbatim extracts from the diary : —

" Thursday, October 16th, 1879. Birth Phillips. On the 16th inst., the
wife of John D. Phillips, S. I. Adare, Royal Irish Constabulary, of a son."

"Thursday, October 23rd, 1879. A most singular thing occurred
last night. Just after going to bed, while I was reading, I heard steps

1 See p. 612 note, and compare cases 696 and 698.

XVL] MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENTS SENSES. 141

outside my door and in the passage, as of a female walking aimlessly.
Thinking it might be Louey, I called, but there was no answer. Imme-
diately after the sounds ceased, the clock struck 11."

" Friday, October 24th, 1879. Letter from Lucius O'Brien, to say —
and it was appalling news — that Mrs. Phillips is dead ! She died
yesterday morning, of fever and scarlatina. I at once determined on
going over to Adare, although the roads were knee-deep and the day
savagely showery. I can never forget the agony of poor Phillips.
He told me that she was getting rapidly worse all day on Wednesday,
and that at about half-past 10 on Wednesday night she became delirious,
and raved of places where she had been"

The Limerick Daily Chronicle confirms Oct. 23, 1879, as the date of
death.

The hallucination here, if telepathic, well illustrates the manner
in which the impression received may be developed by the percipient
(Vol. I., pp. 539-40). The dying woman's thoughts, in turning to her
friend, would naturally be of seeing him and speaking to him, not of an
ineffectual attempt to enter his room. But the impression which the
brain externalised seems to have got no further than the suggestion
of a strange and unexpected visit.

The next account is from Miss Paget, of 130, Fulham Road, S.W.
It will be seen that the words which the percipient heard may not
unnaturally be referred to the sudden idea in the agent's mind that
his unforeseen accident would probably get him into a scrape.

"July 17th, 1885.

(297) " The following is the exact account of the curious appearance to
me of my brother. It was either in 1874 or 1875. My brother was third
mate on board one of Wigram's large ships. I knew he was somewhere on
the coast of Australia, but I have no recollection of my having been think-
ing of him in any special way ; though as he was my only brother, and we
were great friends, there was a very close bond always between us. My
father was living in the country, and one evening I went into the kitchen
by myself, soon after 10, to get some hot water from the boiler. There
was a large Duplex lamp in the kitchen, so it was quite light ; the
servants had gone to bed, and I was to turn out the lamp. As I was
drawing the water, I looked up, and, to my astonishment, saw my brother
coming towards me from the outside door of the kitchen. I did not
see the door open, as it was in a deep recess, and he was crossing
the kitchen. The table was between us, and he sat down on the
corner of the table furthest away from me. I noticed he was in
his sailor uniform with a monkey jacket on, and the wet was
shining on his jacket and cap.1 I exclaimed, ' Miles ! Where have you
come from 1 ' He answered in his natural voice, though very quickly,
' For God's sake, don't say I'm here.' This was all over in a few
seconds and as I jumped towards him he was gone. I was very much

* Compare cases 513, 520, 535, 537.

142 TACTILE CASES AND CASES AFFECTING [CHAP.

frightened, for I had really thought it was my brother himself ; and it
was only when he vanished that I realised it was only an appearance. I
went up to my room and wrote down the date on a sheet of paper, which
I put away in my writing-table, and did not mention the circumstance to
any one.

"About three months afterwards my brother came home, and the
night of his arrival I sat with him in the kitchen, while he smoked. I
asked him in a casual manner if he had had any adventures, and he said,
' I was nearly drowned at Melbourne.' He then told me he was
ashore without leave, and on returning to the ship, after midnight, he
slipped off the gangway between the side of the ship and the dock. There
was very little space, and if he had not been hauled up at once, he must
have been drowned. He remembered thinking he was drowning, and
then became unconscious.1 His absence without leave was not found out,
so he escaped the punishment he expected. I then told him of how he had
appeared to me, and I asked him the date. He was able to fix it exactly,
as the ship sailed from Melbourne the same morning, which was the
reason of his fear of being punished, as all hands were due to be on
board the evening before. The date was the same as the date of his
appearance to me, but the hours did not agree, as I saw him soon after 10
p.m., and his accident was after midnight. He had no recollection of
thinking specially of me at the time, but he was much struck by the
coincidence, and often referred to it. He did not like it, and often
when he went away said, ' Well, I hope I shan't go dodging about as I
did that time.'

" I was about 22 at the time, and he was 20. I was always rather
afraid I might see him or others after this, but I have never, before
or since, had any hallucination of the sense of sight. My brother died
abroad three years ago, and I had no warning then, nor do I imagine I
shall ever see anything again. I am never on the look out for things of
that kind, but if I ever saw anything again I would make a note of it.
1 destroyed the note I made of the date as soon as I had verified it, not
thinking it could interest or concern anyone else. « RUTH PAGET "

[I received a third-hand account of this incident two years before the
above was written, and this older account completely agreed with the
present more recent one; which shows, at any rate, that the inci-
dents stand out with distinctness in Miss Paget's memory. In
conversation, Miss Paget told me that at the moment when she mistook
the apparition for her brother himself, she accounted for the wetness,
which she so distinctly remarked, by supposing that he had got wet
through with rain. She is quite sure that the coincidence of night
was clearly made out, when she and her brother talked the matter
over — which of course makes her statement as to the coincidence of date
technically incorrect, as the accident occurred after midnight. If longitude
be allowed for, the impression must have followed the accident by about
10 hours.]

The next case is from Marian Hughes, confidential maid and
secretary to Miss Julia Wedgwood, of 31, Queen Anne Street, W.

1 See p. 26.

xvi.] MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENT'S SENSES. 143

"December, 1882.

(298) " In the winter of 1878, my sister, Mrs. Barnes, was much pressed
to marry a man named Benson, who was much attached to her ; and not
succeeding in his suit, he told her if she would not marry him, he would
take employment in India. He obtained a situation to go out to Madras.

" One Saturday night, about 9 o'clock, I, in the following spring, went to
see my sister ; she was much agitated, and told me that, just before I came
in, she had been on her knees scrubbing the floor of a room on the ground
floor (with a window that anyone could stand at and look in), when she-
heard herself called twice, ' Annie, Annie,' and looking up at the window,
she saw what looked to her like the face of the friend who had wanted to
marry her. She at once got up and rushed out, but finding no one there
became convinced she had seen an apparition announcing the death of her
friend. On the following Monday, she sent to the firm in the City with
which he was connected, and was informed that he had been ill, but was
better when last heard of. Shortly afterwards, knowing Mr. H. Wedg-
wood's interest in this kind of story, I informed him of the occurrence,
before it was known how it fared with my sister's friend in India.

" My sister, some weeks afterwards, told me that she had learnt from
his employers in the City that he had died on the evening of the day she
had seen the apparition in London. " MARIAN HUGHES."

The Registrar of the Diocese of Madras writes to us that he can find
no record of Benson's burial ; and an exhaustive search in the records of
the India Office has been equally unsuccessful. We learn, however, from
the India Office that the returns do not profess to be absolutely complete.

Writing on the case on March 4, 1883, Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood says : —

" The story was told me by Marian Hughes, my daughter's confidential
maid and attached friend, whose truthfulness may be entirely relied on.
I wanted to hear it from her sister herself, but found that she considered it
too solemn a subject to speak about. I was told of the apparition of the
friend in India shortly after it occurred, and requested Marian to inform
me as soon as they had news of the result." He adds : —

" My note of the case [i.e., the original note made when he first heard
Marian Hughes' account] was dated May 16th, 1878. I say, 'One Satur-
day evening about six weeks ago,' &c. On July 19th, in an article, I say,
'By the end of June it was known that Annie's friend had died
suddenly on the evening of Saturday, 30th March, the day noted by
Annie as the day of the apparition.' "

[Mrs. Barnes has had an auditory hallucination on one other occasion,
when she heard herself called by the voice of her husband, who, it
turned out, had died at a distance two days before.]

It is rare for nautical stories to reach the level of evidence. The
following, however, is a case where the testimony seems hardly to
leave room for a doubt that a hallucination of a particular kind was
experienced at a particular crisis ; and the question of its interpretation
is a matter not of nautical but of scientific judgment. The statement
(which was first published in the Spiritualist) was drawn up sixteen

144 TACTILE CASES AND CASES AFFECTING [CHAP.

days after the incident occurred, through the prompt energy of Mr. W.
H. Harrison, and on the suggestion of the late Mr. Cromwell F. Varley,
F.R.S., who had questioned Captain Blacklock on the subject.

(299) " The steamship ' Robert Lowe' returned to the Thames on Tues-
day, October llth, 1870, from St. Pierre, Newfoundland, where she had been
repairing one of the French Atlantic Telegraph Company's cables. An
engineer on board, Mr. W. H. Pearce, of 37, Augusta Street, East India
Road, Poplar, was taken ill with the typhus fever, and on the 4th of
October last he died. One of his mates, Mr. D. Brown, of 1, Edward
Street, Hudson's Road, Canning Town, Plaistow, a strong, healthy man,
a stoker, not likely to be led astray by imagination, attended him till the
day before he died. [Brown, it appears, bore the best of characters, and
had a strong friendship for Pearce.] On the afternoon before his death,
at 3 o'clock, in broad daylight, Brown was attending the sick man, who
wanted to get out of bed, but his companion prevented him. And this is
what the witness says he saw : —

" ' I was standing on one side of the bunk, and while trying to pre-
vent Pearce from rising, I saw on the other side of the bunk, the wife,
two children, and the mother of the dying man, all of whom I knew
very well, and they are all still living. They appeared to be very sorrow-
ful, but in all other respects were the same as ordinary human beings. I
could not see through them ; they were not at all transparent. They had
on their ordinary clothes, and, perhaps, looked rather paler than usual.
The mother said to me in a clearly audible voice, " He will be buried on
Thursday, at 12 o'clock, in about fourteeen hundred fathoms of water."
They all then vanished instantly, and I saw them no more. Pearce did
not see them, as he was delirious, and had been so for two days previously.
I ran out of the berth in a state of great excitement, and did not enter it
again while he was alive. He died on Tuesday, not Thursday, and was
buried at 4 o'clock, not 12.1 It was a sudden surprise to me to see the
apparitions. I expected nothing of the kind, and when I saw them I
was perfectly cool and collected. I had never before seen anything of
the kind in my life, and my health is, and always has been, good. About
five minutes afterwards I told Captain Blacklock I would stop with the
sick man no longer, but would not tell him why, thinking that if I did,
nobody else would take my place. About an hour later, I told Captain
Blacklock and Mr. Dunbar, the chief engineer, whose address is Old
Mill, near Port William, Wigtownshire, Scotland.'

" The other sailors on board say that they saw that Mr. Brown was
greatly agitated from some cause, and they gradually drew this narrative
out of him." Captain Blacklock says: —

" Brown came down into the cabin, looking very pale and frightened,
and declared in a strong and decided way that he would not attend the
sick man any more on any conditions — not for a thousand pounds. I told

1 This markedly illustrates the absence, from first-hand and immediate accounts, of
the spurious marvels which have done so much to mask the facts of telepathy. It would
be a tolerably safe prophecy that in any third-hand version of this occurrence the great
point would be that the death and burial took place on the day and at the hour predicted.

xvi.] MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENT'S SENSES 145

him that he ought to attend a sick and dying comrade, especially as a
storm was raging, and he needed kind and considerate help, such as any
of us might need one day. I pressed him all the more, as I wanted a
strong steady man to attend the delirious invalid ; besides, it being bad
weather, the other men were fagged and over- worked. Brown would not
go back, and he left the cabin, as I think, crying, so I sent him out a
glass of brandy. Shortly after that, I heard he was very ill, and that his
mates had some trouble in soothing and calming him.

" We the undersigned, officials on board the ' Robert Lowe,' declare the
above statements to be true, so far as each of the circumstances came
under our personal notice, but we none of us commit ourselves to any
opinion as to the cause of the phenomenon. We give the statement
simply because we have been requested to do so, rumours of the occurrence
having gone abroad and caused inquiries to be made.

(Signed) " J. BLACKLOCK, Commander."

" ANDREW DUNBAR, First Engineer.

(Signatures of six other members of the crew.)

"Witness, W. H. HARRISON.

" October 20th, 1870."

[Captain Blacklock is dead. The "Robert Lowe" was lost in 1872,
and only one or two of the crew escaped. The account included a descrip-
tion of some distressing experiences of Mrs. Pearce's, which had occurred
in London during the few days before her husband's death, and filled her
with anxiety on his account ; but this anxiety cannot be safely assumed
to have been in any way a condition of Brown's experience.]

It cannot, of course, be proved that this was not a case of
purely subjective hallucination, as Brown knew the Pearce family by
sight. But the vision, both in its character and its effects, was un-
like any of those which were treated above (Vol. I., Chap. XI.) as due
to expectancy or anxiety. And we at any rate have the coincidence
that a healthy man experienced the one hallucination of his life — and
an extremely vivid and highly-developed specimen — in broad daylight,
at a time when the friend in whose beclouded mind the very scene
evoked may well have been dominant, was dying in close proximity to
him.1

The following is another nautical case, as to which it is not easy
to form an opinion. The points against it are that it is from an
uneducated witness ; and that it contains an account of an experience
which in one respect — the length of its duration — has scarcely a
parallel, as far as I know, among hallucinations of sane and healthy
persons.2 Nevertheless, unless the account is an absolute fabrication, "

1 As regards the supposition that the agent was the sick man himself, cf. case 30,
Vol. i., pp. 214-6. As to the appearance of more figures than one, see the remarks on
case 202.

2 See however cases 590 and 621.

VOL. II. L

146 TACTILE CASES AND CASES AFFECTING [CHAP.

which seems very unlikely, the reasonable conclusion, I think,
would be that a telepathic hallucination was produced, though its
details may have been exaggerated. Mr. Louis Lyons, of 3, Bouverie
Square, Folkestone, wrote, on October 21st, 1882 : —

(300) " Some time ago, my son told me that a friend of his, a rough and
simple-minded fellow, had returned from Shields, and told him a curious
tale. The man is a sailor, and had served with his father ever since he
was a boy, in a collier which trades between this port and the North. The
youth, having become very proficient in his calling, went on his voyages,
leaving his father, now an elderly man, at home. During a stormy voyage,
and not far off the Humber, the young sailor saw his father, whom he had
left in excellent health, pacing the deck, and calling out several times, as
he was wont to do, ' Mind your helm, Joe ! ' The young man wished to
speak to his father, but could not ; some occult power prevented him. At
the end of the voyage a letter awaited the young sailor, announcing the
death of the father at the precise time when he appeared to his son ; but
please to remark (a matter of some importance, I think,) that the appari-
tion remained on deck some three hours, until the vessel got to Grimsby.
[This differs from the first-hand account.]

" I disbelieved my son's story, and requested him to ask his friend to
come and take tea with me, that I might hear the account from his own
mouth. He came. The simplicity of his manner, his plain, open-hearted
account, and I may even say his stupidity, manifested in his peculiar
diction, imparted an impress to his tale."

At our request Mr. Lyons interrogated Edward Sings more formally,
the next time that the latter visited Folkestone. The following is Sings'
own account : —

" Folkestone.

"December 29th, 1882.

" I left my father last about six years ago, on a Good Friday. He was
in good health when I left him. We were in a gale of wind, and we were
running in the Humber ; we carried the main gaff away ; I was at the
wheel steering her in. He came to me 3 or 4 times, tapped me on the
shoulder, and told me to mind the helm, and I told the captain my father
was drowned, or something happened to him. After we got in, when it
was my watch, he was walking to and fro with me, and I went down below
and told my mate I could not stop up, and I did not like to. My mate
took my watch. I never could speak to my father, for something kept me
from doing so. I heard of my father's death a week afterwards. No one
else saw my father's spirit.1 My father stopped on deck with me an hour,
and as I could not stand it any longer I went below, and my mate took
my place. We cast both anchors, and were towed into Grimsby. My
mother and sister were at my father's death-bed, and they told me that
my father asked several times whether I was in the harbour.

" I certify this to be a true account. " EDWARD SINGS."

We find from the Register of Deaths that E. Sings' father died on

1 See p. 48, note.

xvi.] MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENT'S SENSES. 147

April 7, 1877, aged 53. Good Friday fell on March 30; and this, it
will be seen, corresponds very well with the above statement.

Mr. Lyons has kindly visited Sings' mother and sister, at 67, Tontine
Street, Folkestone, and received a similar account from them.

The next case is from a lady whose name may be given privately.
She herself would have been perfectly willing that it should be
published, because the incident " is as natural and real to me as any
other event in my life " ; but she thinks that the publication might

give annoyance to some of her relatives.

" C Rectory.

" May 23rd, 1884.

(301) " In June, 1878, when nursing a brother who was ill, I woke up
suddenly about 2 o'clock on the night of the 24th, calling him, and
feeling strongly that he wanted me. I jumped up and went to the
table, intending to get his medicine, as I was in the habit of doing by
day, but the touch of the table brought me to my senses, and I went
back to bed, thinking it was merely fancy. I was 17 then, quite strong
and well, and had never been conscious of any such impression before.
My sister, who slept in a room opening off mine, heard me call my
brother's name, and came in to see what I was doing, and stayed with me
for some time.

" On asking my brother the next morning what sort of night he had
had, he said, ' Very wakeful at first, but after you came in at 2 o'clock I
went to sleep all right.' I said nothing to him of my experience at that
hour, but told him I had never been in his room all night. He answered,
' Of course you were ; you came in and gave me my drops, and settled my
pillows, and then I got up and did what you told me,' which was opening
the window. I assured him I had done nothing of the kind, when he said
quite impatiently, ' I couldn't have imagined it unless you had ; but you
mustn't do it again or you will catch cold, running about the house at
night.'

" I said no more about it for fear of alarming him, and I never told
anyone of it, lest they should think the nursing was making me ill, but
I was quite strong and well at the time. I put it down in my note-book
that day, and a year later I have another reference there to this same
event.

"Two months later, in August, 1878, I was in Hampshire, my brother
in Sussex. I knew he was dying, but had no reason for thinking him in
any more immediate danger on that day. About 9 o'clock, during break-
fast, a sudden feeling of great depression came over me, which increased
and I could not shake it off all the morning, though I did not particularly
connect it with my brother. One of my sisters noticed it, and asked if I
felt ill. Later on, a telegram came to say that my brother had died quite
suddenly, a few minutes past 9 o'clock. I only mention this because it
was the only other occasion on which I ever remember being conscious of
such a sensation.

"K. A. O."

[This last coincidence may easily, of course, have been accidental.]

VOL. II. L 2

148 TACTILE CASES AND CASES AFFECTING [CHAP.

Miss 0. adds : —

"My sister is away from home, so I wrote to her without giving any
reason for wanting her evidence, and tried to say nothing that would
recall this occurrence to her mind. I simply asked her, ' Do you re-
member your coming into my room one night during H.'s illness ? If
you do, I want a written statement of what you remember.'

" I enclose her reply. She mentions that I called his name, and that
she found me crying, which was true, as the impression that he wanted
me was so strongly upon me, and yet I believed it to be fancy. She
knows that I never left my room, otherwise I might have thought that
I had really gone down the passage to my brother's room, which was at
the other end, but I never walked in my sleep in my life.

" My brother was so positive about it that I felt certain he believed I
had actually done what I had tried to do in my own room. It seemed
perfectly natural to me, but I said nothing to my people, for fear. they
should think the strain of nursing would make me ill.

"These are the references in my note-book: On June 25th, 1878,
among other things about my brother, ' He said that in the night he
woke up, firmly persuaded that I had been in his room, and was talking
to him, and he got up at once, and did exactly as I told him.' On
June 24th, 1879: 'It was this night last year that I woke up in the
middle of the night calling H., and then E. came in. And the next
morning he told me that just at that moment he thought I came into his
room, and he got up to do as I told him.'

" I can't account for his thinking I told him to open the window,
unless from the fact that I got up and went over to the window in my
room where the table was.

" My brother was several years older than myself, and I was extremely
attached to him ; he was accustomed to my doing this sort of thing for
him by day.

"This happened at Salehurst Vicarage, in Sussex, two months before
my father came here. I never spoke of it to them until this week, when
I told my brothers and sisters."

The following is the enclosure mentioned : —

"May 21st, 1884.

" I remember well the event you allude to, of how you awoke one
night, calling for Herbert, and I went into your room, found you crying,
and tried to comfort you. I have often thought of it since.

"EMILY C. O."

In answer to inquiries, Miss K. A. O. says : —

" You ask if this experience was unique in my brother's case, and I
believe it to be so. He would have treated anything of the kind merely
as a joke, and the idea that such a thing as thought-transference was
possible would never have crossed his mind. Nothing that I had done
before could have made him expect me at night, for I had never done
any night nursing, and he himself scolded me for what he imagined the
imprudence of my proceeding. If I had been in the habit of going to his
room, then I should have gone at once when I felt he wanted me, but as I

XVL] MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENT'S SENSES. 149

had never done so, I was afraid of alarming him by going in at night. I
have never had any similar experience."

This case resembles No. 271 above, in the point that the " agency"
was apparently exercised at the moment of startled waking from
sleep ; but considering the circumstances, the present coincidence
could more easily than the other be regarded as accidental. Had the
brother's experience been a dream, or even a vision between sleeping
and waking, we should feel that to be the reasonable view. There is
one feature in the account, no doubt, which looks very like dreaming
— the brother's remark, " You gave me my drops." But it will be
observed that this is not mentioned in the entry in the note-book ;
it seems therefore very probable that it was an unconscious addition
on Miss O.'s part. On the other side we have her brother's recorded
testimony that the phantasmal visit took place at a time when
he was " very wakeful " ; and it would be at least noteworthy
that he should have had what we are led to suppose was the one
waking hallucination of his life, at the very time that his sister was
also experiencing a unique and closely corresponding impression.

§ 3. The next case is of a rarer type ; as, though the senses of sight
and hearing were both affected, the two impressions were not
combined in the same incident, but were separated by several hours
interval. The account is from Mr. Garling, of 12, Westbourne
Gardens, Folkestone, a witness as free from credulity and superstitious
fancies as can well be imagined.

"February, 1883.

(302) " One Thursday evening, about the middle of August in 1849, 1
went, as I often did, to pass the evening with the Rev. — Harrison and his
family, with whom I had for many years lived on terms of the closest
intimacy. The weather being very fine, we made up a party with the
neighbours, and went to the Surrey Zoological Gardens, and spent the
evening there. I note this particularly, because it proves that he and his
family were in good health incontestably on that day, and that no
suspicion of what was to follow so soon existed with anyone. The next
day I went down on a visit to some relatives in Hertfordshire, who lived
at a house called Flamstead Lodge, about 26 miles from London, on the
high road. We usually dined at 2 o'clock, and on Monday afternoon
following, after their early dinner, I left the ladies in the drawing-room, -
and sauntered through the paddock down to the high road. You will
note the time was in the middle of a sunny August day, in a wide, public,
commonplace high road, not a hundred yards from a roadside public-house —
I myself in a perfectly cheerful, healthy frame of mind — no surroundings
of any kind to excite the imagination, some country people not far off,

150 TACTILE CASES AND CASES AFFECTING [CHAP.

indeed, at the time I speak of. Suddenly a ' phantom ' stood before me, so
close that had it been a human being it must have touched me ; blotting
out for a moment the landscape and surrounding objects ; itself indistinct
in outline, but with lips that seemed to move and murmur something,
and with eyes fearfully distinct that fixed and followed and glared into
mine, with a look so intense and deeply earnest that I fairly recoiled from
the spot and started backwards. I said to myself instinctively and
probably uttered it aloud, ' Good God, it is Harrison ! ' though not think-
ing of him or having reason to think of him in the remotest degree at the
xnoment. In probably a few seconds, which seemed to me far longer, it
vanished, leaving me rooted to the spot for a few moments, and sensible
of the reality of the vision by the curious physical effect it left upon me.
This was as if the blood was like ice in my veins ;x no flutter of the
nerves, but a deadly chill feeling that lasted more or less for nearly an
hour, and only gradually wore off as the circulation returned. I have
never felt any similar sensation before or since. I said nothing to the
ladies when I returned, as I should have frightened them out of their wits,
and the impression made upon me gradually became fainter as the day
wore out.

" I have said that the house was near the high road ; it stood in its
own grounds by the side of a country lane leading up to the village, 200 or
300 yards or more from any other habitation, with a seven-foot iron
railing in front to keep out tramps ; gates always locked at night ; about
30 feet of hard gravel and paved pathway from front door to lane. A
beautiful quiet summer evening followed. Placed as the house was, with
hard gravel and high iron palisade and paving, no one could have
approached the house in the deep silence of that summer evening without
being heard a long way off. There was, moreover, a large dog in a kennel,
placed so as to command the front entrance, especially to warn off
intruders ; and a little terrier inside that barked at everybody and at
every noise. We were just retiring to bed, and were sitting in the
drawing-room, which was on the ground floor, close by the front door, the
terrier within. The servants had already gone to bed in a room quite at
the back, 60 feet away. They, when they came down, told us they were
asleep, and were roused by the noise. Suddenly there came to the front
door a noise so loud and continuous (the door seeming to shake in the
frame and to vibrate under some tremendous blows), that we started to
our feet in amazement, and the servants came in a moment after, half-
dressed, running downstairs from their room at the back to know what it
was. We went at once to the door, but could neither hear nor see
anything or anybody. And the dogs gave no tongue whatever. The
terrier, contrary to its nature, slunk shivering under the sofa, and would
not stop even at the door, and nothing could induce him to go into the
darkness. There was no knocker on the door, nothing to fall down, and
no possibility of anyone approaching or leaving the house, so situated, in
that profound silence, without discovery. They were all horribly
frightened, and I found it very difficult to get them to go to bed, but I
was myself in so unimpressionable a frame of mind that I did not at the
time connect it with the ' phantom ' in the afternoon ; but still went to

1 See p. 37, note.

xvi.] MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENT'S SENSES. 151

bed myself, pondering upon it and seeking some obvious explanation to
satisfy the members of the household, but without success.

"I stopped there till Wednesday morning, having no suspicion of what
had happened in my absence. On that morning I returned to town to my
chambers, then at No. 11, King's Road, Grays Inn. My clerk met me
at the door with, ' Sir, a gentleman has been here two or three times ; is
most anxious to see you ; says he must see you immediately ; he is gone
out for a few minutes to get a biscuit, and he will be back directly.' In
a few minutes the gentleman returned, and I recognised at once a Mr.
Chadwick, also an intimate friend of Harrison and his family. He then
told me, to my amazement, ' There has been a fearful visitation of cholera
in the Wandsworth Road,' meaning at Mr. Harrison's ; ' all are gone.'
Mrs. Rosco was attacked on Friday, and died ; her maid the same evening,
and died. Mrs. Harrison was attacked on Saturday morning, and died
that evening. The housemaid died on Sunday. The cook also was taken
ill, was carried away, and escaped very narrowly. Poor Harrison was
attacked himself on Sunday night, was fearfully ill all Monday and
yesterday, and has been taken away from the Pest-house in the Wands-
worth Road to Jack Straw's Castle at Hampstead, to get into a better
air ; he was begging and praying for the people about him, all Monday
and yesterday, to send for you, but nobody knew where you were gone to.
You must take a cab at once and come with me, or you will not see him
alive.' I went with Chadwick at once, but he was dead before I reached
the place.

" H. B. GARLING."

The obituary in the Watchman, for August 15th, 1849, shows that Mrs.
Rosco died from cholera on August 4th, Mrs. Harrison on August 8th,
and the Rev. T. Harrison on Thursday (not Wednesday), the 9th, at
Hampstead.

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Garling says : —

" The ladies were old, and have been dead some 25 years. Of the
servants at the house all trace has been lost."

Mr. Garling added a few details, in conversation with the present
writer. The figure met him on the high road, so close to his face that he
hardly observed anything in detail except the face. He has had one other
hallucination, when he seemed to see the figure of a friend at the foot of
his bed. But the friend was one whose funeral he had just been attending,
and • who, moreover, had been accustomed, in life, to sit where the figure
was seen ; and Mr. Garling himself was going to sleep at the time. The
experience, therefore, cannot be argued to show any special proclivity to
subjective hallucination.

The auditory experience here is a good specimen of what I have_
called the rudimentary type — a class of which the inconclusiveness
has been sufficiently dwelt on. But clearly the presumption that the
sound was telepathic in origin is strengthened by the fact of the visual
experience which preceded it. Telepathy having (as we may reason-

152 CASES AFFECTING MORE THAN ONE SENSE. [CHAP.

ably suppose) produced the first phenomenon, it is not unreasonable
to credit it with the second ; especially since the second, though
it affected so many persons, seems in itself particularly hard to account
. for by any objective cause in the vicinity. It may appear, no doubt,
extremely strange that the conditions which first flashed an impression
to the one person directly interested should afterwards involve, the
whole household in a psychic storm; but this topic belongs to the
concluding chapter, on " Collective Cases."

XVII.]

CHAPTER XVII.

RECIPROCAL CASES.

§ 1. WE have now to consider a quite new type of telepathic action.
In the classes which have so far been passed in review, whether
experimental or spontaneous, the parts of the agent and the -per-
cipient have been well defined, and the current of influence has set
from the one to the other in an unmistakeable fashion. But in several
cases, it may be remembered, (especially Nos. 35 and 94,) we have had
indications that the influence might be a reciprocal one — that each
of the parties might receive a telepathic impulse, from the other, and
so each be at once agent and percipient. The cases referred to
were doubtful, because the experience at one end of the line was a
dream ; and dreams having an almost limitless scope, it was conceivable
enough that that of Mr. Newnham, for instance, though it curiously
corresponded with his fiancdes actions and surroundings at the time,
did so by accident ; and that therefore his mental condition, while it
affected her, was not affected by her. But had he had a waking vision
of her, as she had of him, we should have considered it probable that
the influence was mutual ; since if two rare or unique events, which
present so obvious a primd facie connection as A's vision of B and
B's vision of A, fall at the same time, we cannot readily assume the
coincidence to be accidental. And if there are further and more
distinct grounds for attributing B's vision to telepathy — say because
A is dying at the time — it will be only reasonable to regard A's
vision as part of the same complex phenomenon, rather than to
suppose that A has an accidental vision at the same time as B has a
telepathic one. But of course the proof of a reciprocal influence
would be stronger still if, at the the time of B's impression of A, A
expressed in words some piece of knowledge as to B's condition which
could not have been acquired in a normal manner. We thus see that
a group of cases which have all the same claim to be considered

154 RECIPROCAL CASES. [CHAP.

telepathic, may have different claims, ranging from the very doubtful
to the very conclusive, to be considered reciprocally telepathic.1

I will begin with a couple of the more doubtful cases. The
following account was received through the kindness of Mr. G. J.
Romanes, F.R.S., who is well acquainted with the narrator.

" March 18th, 1883.

(303) " On the night of the 26th of October, 1872, 1 suddenly felt very
unwell, and went to bed about half-past 9, an hour earlier than usual, and
fell asleep almost immediately, when I had a very vivid dream, which
impressed me greatly; so much so, that I remarked to my wife, on
waking, that I feared we should shortly receive bad news. I imagined
I was sitting in the drawing-room near a table, reading, when an
old lady suddenly appeared seated on the opposite side, close to the
table. She neither spoke nor moved much, but gazed very intently on
me, and I on her, for at least 20 minutes. I was much struck by her
appearance, she having white hair, very dark eyebrows, and penetrating
eyes. I did not recognise her at all, but thought she was a stranger. My
attention was then directed to the door, which opened, and my aunt
entering and seeing me and the old lady staring at each other in this
extraordinary way, with much surprise and in a tone of reproach
exclaimed, ' John ! don't you know who this is 1 ' and without giving me
time to reply said, ' Why, this is your ^grandmother,' whereupon my
ghostly visitor suddenly rose from her chair, embraced me, and vanished.

1 The numerous cases where two friends in different places prove to have been each
exceptionally engrossed with the idea of the other at the same moment, must not be put
forward as instances of telepathic, much less of reciprocal, action ; for we may always
suppose that the impressions only appeared to have been exceptionally vivid after
the fact of the coincidence had given them a certain exceptional interest. The undue
importance often attached to such incidents is to be regretted, since it confuses the subject,
and to some extent excuses a similar confusion on the part of opponents — as, e.g., when an
eminent man of science thinks telepathy sufficiently refuted by this very consideration,
that by accident friends sometimes think of one another, and even write to one another,
simultaneously (Deutsche Rundschau for Jan., 1886, p. 45). Nor will it suffice for the
exceptional character of one of the impressions to be established beyond doubt. For
example, Miss Edith Taylor, of 9, Endsleigh Gardens, N.W., tells us of the following
experience of herself and a friend.

"June 25th, 1884.

" I was living at the time in Germany, and my friend in Holland. She had been
visiting at the house where I was staying, but had returned home some weeks before
the ' illusion ' occurred. One evening in the autumn of 1880, I was walking alone in the
garden, trying to learn some German poetry, and not succeeding very well, when I heard
some one step on to the gravel walk behind me. I then felt the touch of a hand on my
arm, .and my friend's voice said pretty distinctly, 'Edith, Edith.' I turned round very
quickly, and I believe I said, ' Why, what is it ? ' I certainly expected to find some one
behind me, and had a sort of wild idea that it must be my friend, from the curious way in
which my name was spoken, the foreign accent in the word. Seeing nobody I was fright-
ened, and went in. In answer to the letter in which I told her what had passed, my
friend wrote back that it was curious that I should have fancied her so near me just then.
She had been reading Italian, which we had studied together for a while, and had very
much wished to speak to me about some passage that had struck her in the lesson. My
friend had not heard or imagined that she heard me, but she said she felt as if the air
were full of me."

Miss Taylor's hallucination was quite unique in her life ; but we cannot tell that her
friend's thoughts were not pretty constantly directed to her at this period ; and there is,
therefore, no reason why the coincidence, such as it was, should not have been a pure
accident.

xvii.] RECIPROCAL CASES. 155

At that moment I awoke. Such was the impression it made on my mind,
that I got my note-book and made a note of this strange dream, believing
that it foreboded bad tidings. However, several days passed without
bringing any dreaded intelligence, when one night I received a letter from
my father, announcing the rather sudden death of my grandmother, which
took place on the very night and hour of my dream, half -past 10.

" About four months after her death, I went to the Isle of Wight,
where she lived, to get information from my relatives as to what my
grandmother was really like. My aunt and cousin described her in every
particular, and their descriptions of her coincided most marvellously with
the figure and face that appeared to me, the white hair and dark eyebrows
being a peculiarity in her. This I particularly observed in my dream. I
learnt, too, that she was extremely fussy in the arrangement of her cap,
always being anxious that no part, even the strings, should be out of place,
and curious to relate, I noticed in my dream that she was nervously
touching her cap strings, now and again, for fear they should be out of
place. My cousin, who was with her when she died, told me that my
grandmother had been delirious for some time previous to her departure ;
and for a moment, when in that state, she suddenly put her arms round
my cousin's neck, and on opening her eyes and regaining consciousness, she
said with a look of surprise, ' Oh, Polly, is it you ? I thought it was some
body else.' This seems to me very curious, as it was just what she did
before she vanished from me in the drawing-room. I must add that I had
not seen my grandparent for at least 14 years, and the last time I saw her
she had dark hair, but this had gradually changed to white, leaving her
eyebrows dark, and I am positive that nobody ever mentioned this
peculiarity to me." l " J. H. W."

Mrs. W. says : —

" July 1st, 1885.

" I quite remember my husband telling me, on my going to my room on
the evening of the 26th October, of a remarkable dream he had just
had, and also his making an entry in the pocket book on the following
morning.

" F. W."

We find from the Register of Deaths that Jane W. died at the age
of 72, on Oct. 26, 1870 [see below], at Brixton, Isle of Wight.

Mr. Podmore says : —

"I called on Mr. J. H. W. to-day (July 4th, 1884), and heard the
acco'unt from him vivd voce. His cousin's corroboration, for a reason which
he explained to me, cannot be obtained. But he explained to me that
he went to see his cousin within three months of the death, and received
full particulars of the death-scene from her then. I asked him if he stood
by the phrase ' at least 20 minutes,' pointing out that it was difficult to
attach any precise meaning to these words ; if they were a correct descrip-
tion of his impressions, a grotesque incident must have been interpolated"

1 In respect of this last feature, the case may be classed with those of Chap, xii., § 8.
The nervous fidgeting with the cap-strings may possibly be regarded as a distinctive
habit, sufficiently deeply organised to be a feature in the person's latent representation of
her own physique. See the remarks at the end of the section referred to.

156 RECIPROCAL CASES. [CHAP.

in the midst of an otherwise realistic dream. He maintains that the words
are correct ; it seemed to him that he and the old lady sat staring at each
other across the table for a very long time. Mr. W. told me that he
dreams very little ; and that he has never had another dream which he
thought worth noting. He has never dreamt of death."

After a second call, Mr. Podmore writes : —

" I received an account from Mrs. W. of her husband's dream, as she
remembered to have heard it within an hour of its occurrence and sub-
sequently, which tallied precisely with the account here given. I saw also
the note made on the following morning. It occurs at the head of the
first page of a small pocket sketch-book, the rest of the page being
occupied with pen or pencil memoranda of accounts, &c. The entry is
'Odd dream, night of October 26th, 1870.' The last numeral, which
is very indistinct, is apparently 0. Mr. W., in writing 'his original
account in March, 1883, had referred to this note and read the final
numeral as 2. Hence the discrepancy. He has no other memorandum of
the death.

" I pressed him as far as I could, but he still declines to give his name,
fearing that he might acquire the reputation of being ' ghostly ' and
fanciful, and thus injure his professional prospects."

Clearly the dream here is far less likely to have been accidental
than Mr. Newnham's. But the inference from the dying woman's
words, that she may have been in some way affected with a sense
of her grandson's presence, is, of course not one that can be pressed.
And the same remark applies to several cases where A, who is in the
crisis of illness, professes actually to have seen, as though by some
clairvoyant flash, an absent relative, B, who turns out to have had
at the same time a telepathic impression of A; for unless special
details of B's aspect or surroundings are described, A's alleged per-
ception of him may always be supposed to have been a mere
subjective dream or vision, and the percipience is not demonstrably
reciprocal. l

The next example — from Mr. J. T. Milward Pierce, of Bow Ranche,
Knox County, Nebraska, U.S.A., — stands somewhat apart.

"Frettons, Danbury, Chelmsford.

"January 5th, 1885.

(304) "I live in Nebraska, U.S., where I have a cattle ranche, &c.
I am engaged to be married to a young lady living in Yankton, Dakota,
25 miles north.

"About the end of October, 1884, while trying to catch a horse, I
was kicked in the face, and only escaped being brained by an inch or two;

1 For instances of the sort, see cases 245 and 354 ; also 612, and Mrs. Fox's account,
given in a note to that case.

xvii.] RECIPROCAL CASES, 157

as it \yas I had two teeth split and a severe rap on the chest. There were
several men standing near. I did not faint, nor was I insensible for a
moment, as I had to get out of the way of the next kick. There was a
moment's pause before anyone spoke. I was standing leaning against
the stable wall, when I saw on my left, apparently quite close, the young
lady I have mentioned. She looked pale. I did not notice what she wore ;
but I distinctly noticed her eyes, which appeared troubled and anxious.
There was not merely a face, but the whole form, looking perfectly ma-
terial and natural. At that moment my bailiff asked me if I was hurt. I
turned my head to answer him, and when I looked again she had gone. I
was not much hurt by the horse ; my mind was perfectly clear, for
directly afterwards I went to my office and drew the plans and prepared
specifications for a new house, a work which requires a clear and
concentrated mind.

" I was so haunted by the appearance that next morning I started for
Yankton. The first words the young lady said when I met her were,
' Why, I expected you all yesterday afternoon. I thought I saw you
looking so pale, and your face all bleeding.' (I may say the injuries had
made no visible scars.) I was very much struck by this and asked her
when this was. She said, ' Immediately after lunch.' It was just after
my lunch that the accident occurred. I took the particulars down at the
time. I may say that before I went into Yankton, I was afraid that
something had happened to the young lady. I shall be happy to send you
any further particulars you may desire.

" JNO. T. MILWARD PIERCE."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Pierce says : —

" I think the vision lasted as long as a quarter of a minute." He
has had no other visual hallucination, except that once, when lying shot
through the jaw by an Indian, he thought he saw an Indian standing over
him, and infers that it was not a real one, or he would have been scalped.

Mr. Pierce wrote on May 27th, 1885 : —

" I sent your letter to the lady, but did not get an answer before
leaving England, and upon arriving here found her very ill, and it is
only recently I have been able to get the information you wished for.
She now wishes me to say that she recollects the afternoon in question,
and remembers expecting me, and being afraid something had happened,
though it was not my usual day for coming ; but although at the time she
told me that she saw me with a face bleeding, she does not now appear
to recollect this, and I have not suggested it, not wishing to prompt her in
any way."

In another letter of July 13th, 1885, Mr. Pierce says: —

" I am sorry I can do no better for you than the enclosed letter. The
fact seems to be that events of absorbing interest, and illness, appear to"
have driven nearly all remembrance of the incident from Miss MacGregor's
mind, attaching no particular importance to it at first. I have prompted
her memory, but she only says, no doubt I am right, but that she can't
now recollect it."

158 RECIPROCAL CASES. [CHAP.

The letter enclosed from Miss Macgregor is as follows : —

" Yankton, D.T.

"July 13th, 1885.

" I have read the letter you sent to Mr Pierce. I am afraid I cannot
now recall the time you mention clearly enough to give you any distinct
recollection.

" I remember feeling sure some accident had happened, but I told Mr.
Pierce at the time everything unusual I felt, and events that have since
occurred have, I am afraid, completely effaced all clear recollections of
the facts. " ANNIE MACGREGOR."

Knowing Mr. Pierce, I have no doubt that his recollection of what
Miss MacGregor told him at the time is substantially accurate,
and if so, it would be natural to interpret her experience as telepathic.
But his vision may have been purely subjective. I am not aware, it
is true, of any precisely parallel case, unless indeed it be Mr. Pierce's
other experience, with the Indian. In my collection of purely
subjective cases, I have one from a lady who was troubled by
hallucinations for some time after a concussion of the brain; but
the blow which Mr. Pierce received was a comparatively slight one.
Still, seeing that on the one hand his faculties may have been
momentarily disordered by it, and that on the other the person whose
form he saw was in a completely normal state at the time, it is safer
not to lay stress on the reciprocal aspect of the case.

§ 2. The remaining cases are, I think, less doubtful. The follow-
ing account is extracted from the evidence given by the late Mr.
Cromwell F. Varley, F.R.S., before a Committee of the Dialectical
Society, on May 25, 1869 (Report, p. 161. Another case of Mr.
Varley's will be found in Vol. I., p. 288).

(305) " In a second case my sister-in-law had heart disease. Mrs. Varley
and I went into the country to see her, as we feared, for the last time. I had
a nightmare and could not move a muscle. While in this state, I saw the
spirit1 of my sister-in-law in the room. I knew that she was confined to
her bedroom. She said, ' If you do not move you will die ' ; but I could
not move, and she said, ' If you submit yourself to me, I will frighten you,
and you will then be able to move.' At first I objected, wishing to
ascertain more about her spirit-presence. When at last I consented, my
heart had ceased beating. .1 think at first her efforts to terrify me
did not succeed, but when she suddenly exclaimed, ' Oh, Cromwell ! I am
dying,' that frightened me exceedingly, and threw me out of the torpid
state, and I awoke in the ordinary way. My shouting had aroused Mrs.
Varley ; we examined the door, and it was still locked and bolted, and I
told my wife what had happened, having noted the hour, 3.45 a.m., and

1 See p. 48, note.

xvii.] RECIPROCAL CASES. 159

cautioned her not to mention the matter to anybody, but to hear what was
her sister's version, if she alluded to the subject. In the morning she told
us that she had passed a dreadful night ; that she had been in our room,
and greatly troubled on my account, and that I had been nearly dying. It
was between 3.30 and 4 a.m. when she saw I was in danger. She only
succeeded in arousing me by exclaiming, ' Oh, Cromwell ! I am dying.'
I appeared to her to be in a state which otherwise would have ended
fatally."

Even this incident might possibly be explained (like case 94) as
an instance of simultaneous dreams l — an independent and original
nightmare of one of the two parties concerned inducing that of the
other, without being reciprocally influenced by it. The next case,
if correctly recorded, could not be so regarded. The account is
contained in a letter from Mr. T. W. Smith, late of Leslie Lodge,
Baling, to the Psychological Society, dated February 26th, 1876, and
kindly lent to us by Mr. F. K. Munton, who was secretary of that
Society. Mr. Smith, who was known to Prof. Barrett, left Baling
early in 1877, and his present address cannot be ascertained.

(306) " I found the lady who is now my wife at a large public institution
to which I was appointed headmaster, in 1872. On leaving her situation,
I induced her, for certain reasons, to conceal the fact of our intended
marriage from those of her friends whom she had left behind at the
school, and the only way to do this was not to write to any of them.

" Some six months after our marriage, I was reading in bed, according
to a habit of mine, my wife asleep at my side, when she awoke suddenly,

sat up, and exclaimed, in very earnest tones, ' Oh, I have been to .'

I, of course, treated what she forthwith began to relate to me as a more
than usually vivid dream, and the next day ceased to think of it. She,
however, recurred to her dream from time to time, and I remember the
circumstantial way in which she dwelt upon each point of it, especially a
peculiar expression which I did not forget, though I made no written note
of it at the time. Three months later my wife went to visit her mother,
and found there a letter from one of her friends, urgently entreating
some one to write and say whether Miss — — (my wife) was alive or dead.
I was induced to go and see the writer, and then ascertained the cause of
her hastily-written and strangely-worded epistle. The two occurrences on
the s"ame day — as well as I could fix the date, for neither of us were quite
certain as to that essential particular — present a coincidence which I have
never been able satisfactorily to explain on any hypothesis consistent with
what is at present known of nature's laws.

" My wife dreamt that she was in a well-remembered room, at the base
of the building, in company with four females — two of whom were old.
friends and two strangers to her. They were talking and laughing and
preparing to retire to their several sleeping apartments. She saw one of
them turn off the gas. She followed them upstairs, entered with two of

1 See Vol. i., pp. 314-20, and the opening cases in Chap, iii, of the Supplement.

160 RECIPROCAL CASES. [CHAP.

them into a bedroom, saw ' Bessie ' place some things in a box, undress,
and get into bed ; then she went to her, took her by the hand, and said,
' Bessie, let us be friends.' So much for the dream.

" The writer of the letter gave me this account of what had occasioned
her writing ; and I need scarcely say that I did not first mention what my
wife had dreamt, for in that case it might be supposed that I had myself
assisted in suggesting the remarkable expression, which, in my opinion,
removes the occurrence from the category of 'remarkable coincidence's.'
She and her friend, ' Bessie,' had gone to bed one Sunday night', when an
alarming cry from the latter brought the other to her bedside : ' I have
just seen ' (my wife) ; ' she touched me and said, " Let us be friends." '

" The next day, on discussing the matter, though some of them thought
that Bessie had been dreaming, and imagined what she declared she saw,
others thought it a ' sign ' that my wife was dead. And the one who was
the best scribe amongst them undertook to write to the only address they
possessed, in order to ascertain the truth. The letter had not been
forwarded to us because my wife had, it seems, told her mother my wish
that no communication with her former friends should take place.

" The odd thing about the dream is that my wife had always been on
good terms with ' Bessie,' and was so on parting with her.

" In the foregoing account of the dream, and what I may call its
complement, I omit many minor points, such as the fact that two new
comers had taken the place of two former friends of my wife ; that the
effect on both my wife and Bessie was beyond what any ordinary dream
would have produced ; and that the two females, whom my wife in her
dream saw enter the bedroom, did really occupy the same room."

[It is much to be regretted that we have had no opportunity of ex-
amining the letter ; l but the correspondence of the two experiences would
hardly have impressed Mr. Smith as it did, if it had not included a very
striking detail.]

1 The importance, in these apparently reciprocal cases, of obtaining independent evi-
dence from both sides, is well shown in the following example, A lady of good sense,
occupying a responsible position — whose name is suppressed not by her wish, but because
our view of the case differs considerably from hers — wrote to us on November 29, 1884 : —

"In the summer of 1864, I had cause for grave anxiety concerning the moral condi-
tion of a very dear friend. I knew that W. had formed a connection which, if persisted
in, would lead to his ruin, present and eternal. On the 30th of August, 1864, I retired to
rest about half -past 10. As the clock struck 11 my husband was alarmed by my violent
sobbing, which caused me to awake, on which I exclaimed, ' Oh, husband ! it is all over
with poor W. I have seen him, in my dream, brought under great temptation by the
wicked words of that woman. In a passion of tears I implored him to have mercy on
himself. At first he seemed to hesitate, then, at a sign from her, he motioned me angrily
away, saying, " I will have none of your restrictions. I have been held back by them too
long already." With these bitter words I awoke, to find myself bathed in tears.'

" For three days this vision haunted me with a tenacity I could not shake off. Judge
then my surprise at receiving the following narrative from W, : —

" 'On the night of August 20th, while sitting smoking my cigar (after 10 p.m.), the
last person on earth I wished to see was announced. She came forward to me with words
of bitter reproach, followed by tender persuasion, in the midst of which the door of my
dining-room again opened, and you appeared, in a long white gown, your hair floating
over your shoulders. With a wild burst of weeping you implored me not to listen to
another word she uttered, and when I angrily replied, " I will have none of your restric-
tions," with a look of anguish unutterable you slowly faded from my sight. Not so the
impression produced on my mind. I felt God had sent you as my guardian angel, and,
like one of old, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. I was saved in a moment

xvn.] RECIPROCAL CASES, 161

The evidential weakness of this narrative is, of course, the doubt
as to the exactitude of the coincidence. Supposing the two experiences
to have fallen on the same night, we can hardly help connecting
" Bessie's " impression (which seems to have been a hallucination and
not a dream) with Mrs. Smith's remarkable vision ; which latter is
again, apparently, an instance of thought-transference of that extreme
form which I have described as telepathic clairvoyance.1

That this last word is the appropriate one for describing (it is far
enough of course from explaining) the process appears from other
examples ;• and a glance at the condition of these reciprocal cases
will show that it would naturally be so. There is, as a rule, no difficulty
in deciding to which of the -two persons concerned the origin of the
complex phenomenon should be traced ; since one of the two is
in a more or less abnormal condition, as compared to the other. In
Mrs. Smith's case, the abnormality (outwardly at any rate) was nothing
beyond sleep ; but in other examples it is far more pronounced. If,
then, it is A who is in the abnormal state — dying, or whatever it may
be — we attribute B's vision of him to that state. But we cannot
inversely attribute A's vision of B to B's state, if B's state is
completely normal. It may, no doubt, be said that B's state ceases

of supreme danger, and desire to give God the glory for so evident an interposition on
my behalf. '

"I did not keep the letter, but am absolutely positive of its date and its corroboration
of the remarkable vision.

"E. A. A."
Mrs. A.'s husband corroborates as follows : —

"January 29th, 1885.

" I can distinctly recollect the night on which my wife had the remarkable dream
referred to, the particulars of which she related to me directly she awoke. She was

Esatly excited and much troubled, and repeated several times, ' I hope nothing has
ppened to W. G.'

" A day or two afterwards — it may have been the second or third day ; of this I am
uncertain — she received a letter from our friend, which I saw and read, and which con-
firmed in an extraordinary manner the connection with her dream. Mrs. A., I think,
has already told you the particulars, which I need not enter into further.

" J. A."

Now though this account was undoubtedly given in good faith, it contains some very
suspicious points. The conversational style of interview between the gentleman (whose
previous excited state naturally marks him as the "agent") and the apparition, finds
hardly any parallel in our first-hand records ; and it is rendered doubly strange by_ his
accepting his friend's intrusion — at that hour and in that guise-^as a quite natural inci-
dent. We might surmise that possibly something of a telepathic nature took place ; but
that it was exactly, or even approximately, what is reported could not be assumed without
independent corroboration. I therefore .wrote to the gentleman concerned, and asked
him whether he remembered having ever seen the phantasmal figure of a friend, whose
visit was apparently intended to warn him at a critical iuncture. He replied : " J
remember the circumstance you refer to distinctly ; " adding that he was at the time over-
wrought in body and mind. But on my asking him whether any one else was present at
the time, and what were the words spoken, he replied, " There was no one present, nor
any words spoken, to the best of my recollection ; had there been, I don't think I should
have forgotten. " Clearly a case where there is this amount of discrepancy between the
two principal witnesses cannot be quoted as evidence.

1 Compare Mr. Moule's case, Vol. i., p. 110, note.
VOL. II. M

162 RECIPROCAL CASES. [CHAP.

to be normal at the moment when A affects him ; and that possibly
the power to react telepathically on the impression is started by the
mere fact of receiving it. But the more natural account of the
matter would surely trace A's impression, no less than B's, to the
peculiarity of A's state — by supposing either that A's power to act
abnormally in a certain direction has involved an abnormal extension
of his own susceptibility in the same direction ; or else that some
independently-caused extension of his own susceptibility has involved
the power to act abnormally.1 In either case, his reception of the
impression would be active rather than passive ; of the sort that partly
seems (as I tried to express it before) like the momentary using of
B's faculties — although B's state is not now, as in the former
clairvoyant pictures and dreams,2 supplying any exceptional tele-
pathic stimulus. Still, though A's percipience may not be conditioned
by B's state, it must, I conceive, be conditioned by B's existence and
relation to A ; and the distinction again stands clear between
telepathic clairvoyance, and that alleged independent clairvoyance
where what is discerned cannot be traced in any natural way to the
contents of any other human mind.

The next example is from the Hon. Mrs. Parker, of 60, Elm Park
Gardens, S.W., who wrote to us on May 24th, 1883 : —

(307) " The following experience happened in the month of November,
1877, in Regency Square, Brighton. My husband [since deceased] was
undergoing a course of magnetism from Mr. L., an American. The
treatment consisted of rubbing by mesmeric passes down the back and
arms and legs, but in all this there was no intention of putting my husband
to sleep. The passes were intended to give strength. Mr. L. called
himself, I believe, a professional mesmerist, but at the time we employed
him he was not practising as such. He had come to Brighton for rest.

" After the treatment my husband was in the habit of sitting, for some
hours, in his wheel-chair, at the top of the Square garden, and on the day

1 This latter hypothesis seems specially applicable to cases where A's condition has
been one of mere sleep or trance, and not abnormal in any more serious way. For, con-
sidering that nearly all the evidence that exists for the reality of clairvoyance goes
further to show that sleep and trance are the conditions most favourable to it, we should
certainly rather conceive that what enables A to affect B is the clairvoyant perception
itself of B or B's surroundings, than that this perception is a secondary result, dependent
on the fact that A has impressed B by dint merely of being asleep or entranced. Case
271, above, may possibly be an instance of what is meant. We should naturally expect that
where the conditions are much the same on both sides, A's and B's parts in the
phenomenon might be exactly equal and parallel — each being perceived by the other in the
other's own environment ; and case 644 seems to be an example of this.

1 may note here that the evidence for a heightening of telepathic susceptibility at the
time of death, and in seasons of illness, is not confined to the class of cases now in
question. See for instance cases 126, 147, 167, 303, 308, 311, 416 ; and the opening
cases of Chap. ii. of the Supplement, which are of the more ordinary thought-transference
type.

2 Vol. i., pp. 258-67, 338-40, and 368-88.

XVIL] RECIPROCAL CASES. 163

of which I am writing he had expressed a wish to stay out rather later
than usual. I went into the house for luncheon, leaving him alone, but
on looking out of the window a little later, at 2 o'clock, I saw a man
standing in front of his chair, and apparently talking to him. I wondered
who it was, and concluded it must be a stranger, as I did not recognise the
figure, or the wide-awake hat and rather oddly-cut Inverness cape which
he wore. However, as it very often happened that strangers did stop and
speak to him, I was not surprised. I turned away my eyes for a moment,
and when I again looked up the garden, the man had disappeared. I could
not see him leaving the garden by any of the numerous gates, and remarked
to myself how very quickly he must have walked to be so soon out of sight.
Regency Square does not possess a tree and scarcely a shrub, so that there
was nothing to impede my view.

" When my husband came in a little later, I said to him, carelessly,
* Oh, who was that talking to you in the square just now ? '

" He replied, ' No one has spoken to me since you left. No one has
even passed near me.'

" ' But I saw a man standing in front of you and — as I thought —
talking to you about a quarter-of-an-hour ago. His dress was so odd, I
couldn't at all tell who it could be.'

" At this my husband laughed, saying, ' I should think not, for there
was no one to recognise. I assure you not a soul has been near me since
you left.'

" ' Have you been asleep ? ' I asked, though I did not think it very
likely. He assured me he had not. So the subject dropped ; still in my
own mind I knew I had seen the mysterious figure.

" Two days afterwards, Mr. L., after giving my husband his treatment,
came, as was his usual habit, to speak to me before leaving the house.
After a few words and directions, he said, ' It is a very odd thing, but the
same experience has happened to me twice since I have attended your
husband, that, when in quite another place, I have suddenly felt as
if I were standing by his side, either in your drawing-room or out there in
the garden.'

" I looked at him, and for the first time noticed his overcoat which he
had put on before coming into the room, and the wide-awake in his hand.
It struck me that these articles were very similar to those worn by the
figure I had seen, and that in every way Mr. L. resembled this same
figure. I asked him when, and at what time, he had had the last
experience spoken of? 'The day before yesterday,' was the reply. 'I
had just finished an early dinner, and was sitting in front of the fire
with a newspaper. It was about 2 o'clock ; I remember the time
perfectly. Suddenly I felt I was no longer there, but standing near
your husband in the Square garden.'

" I then told him of the figure I had seen at the same time and place,
and how I now recognised it to be his. Afterwards I asked my husband
if he had mentioned the circumstance to Mr. L., but he had not done so,
and had indeed forgotten all about it. My husband was the only person
to whom I had mentioned the fact of my vision. It could not by any
possibility have got round to Mr. L. « AUGUSTA PARKER."

[In answer to the inquiry whether she had ever had any other halluci-

VOL. II. M 2

164 RECIPROCAL CASES. [CHAP.

nation of the senses,' Mrs. Parker replied that she had had one other. It
seems likely, however, that this was merely a. case of mistaken identity,
the figure being seen at the end of a long hotel-passage ; and this was her
own impression at the time.]

This case again seems difficult to explain except on the reciprocal
theory. It is true that there is not the same proof in the case of Mr.
L. as in that of Mrs. Smith above, that the scene which he saw was
transferred, and not spontaneously pictured ; for the place was
familiar to him, and no unusual details are mentioned. But, on the
other hand, his experience seems to have been quite unlike an
ordinary dream ; its very unusualness is what allows us to connect it
with Mrs. Parker's simultaneous and unique vision ; and if we may
regard it as having been conditioned by the presence in the per-
ceived scene of his patient, Mr. Parker — who forms, so to speak, the
pivot of the case — the fact that Mr. Parker himself was not con-
sciously affected can still be accounted for on the analogy of such
instances as Nos. 242 and 35 5.1

The next case was one of collective percipience ; but its best
place is in the present chapter. The full names of the persons con-
cerned may be mentioned, but not printed. Mrs. S., one of the

percipients, writes : —

"April, 1883.

(308) " A and B2 are two villages in Norfolk, distant about five miles
from each other. At the time of the occurrence about to be related, the
clergymen of these parishes both bore the same name, though there was no
relationship between them ; at the same time there was a great friendship
between the two families. On the 20th February, 1870, a daughter,
Constance, about 14 years old, of the clergyman of A, was staying with
the other family — a daughter, Margaret, in that family, being her great
friend. Edward W., the eldest son of the Rector of A, was at that time
lying dangerously ill at home with inflammation of the lungs, and was
frequently delirious. On the day mentioned, at about noon, Margaret and
Constance were in the garden of B Rectory, running down a path which
was separated by a hedge from an orchard adjoining ; they distinctly heard
themselves called twice, apparently from the orchard, thus : ' Connie,
Margaret — Connie, Margaret.' They stopped, but could see no one, and
so went to the house, a distance of about 40 yards, concluding that one of
Margaret's brothers had called them from there. But to their surprise they

1 I should further conjecture one of the conditions of Mrs. Parker's percipience to
have been the fact that she was actually contemplating the scene in which Mr. S. seemed
to find himself (see pp. 267-9).

2 These letters are substituted for those actually given for the sake of clearness. The
names of the villages were not suppressed in the accounts that follow ; but as they were
suppressed in this first one, it has been thought right to suppress them throughout.

xvn.] RECIPROCAL CASES. 165

found that this was not the case; and Mrs. W., Margaret's mother, assured
the girls no one had called them from the house, and they therefore con-
cluded they must have been mistaken in supposing they had heard their
names repeated. This appeared to be the only explanation of the matter,
and nothing more was thought of it.

"That evening Constance returned to her home at A. On the follow-
ing day, Mrs. W. drove over to inquire for the sick boy Edward. In the
course of conversation, his mother said that the day before he had been
delirious, and had spoken of Constance and Margaret, that he had called
to them in his ' delirium, and had then said, ' Now I see them running
along the hedge, but directly I call them they run towards the house.'
Mrs. W., of B, at once called to mind the mystery of the previous day,
and asked, ' Do you know at what time that happened ? ' Edward's mother
replied that it was at a few minutes past 12, for she had just given the
invalid his medicine, 12 being his hou'r for taking, it. So these words
were spoken by Edward at the same time at which the two girls had heard
themselves called, and thus only could the voice from the 'orchard be
accounted for.

"M. K. S."

(The " Margaret " of the narrative.)

The following statement is from Mrs. R., the " Constance " of the
narrative.

"Sept. 1884.

" Margaret and I were walking in some fields at B., away from the
road, but not very far from the house. Here I heard a voice call ' Connie
and Margaret ' clearly and distinctly. I should not have identified it with
Ted's voice [i.e., her brother's at A.], for we thought it was one of the B
brothers at the time, till we found no one had called us. I remember that
it was before early dinner, and that I was expecting to be fetched home that
same morning, because of Ted's illness ; and that Mrs. W. thought of ask-
ing mother if Ted had mentioned our names in any way, before she told
her of what had passed at B. I ought to add that an explanation of the
story might be found in the conduct of some B plough-boy, playing a trick
upon us. The situation was such that he might easily have kept out of
sight behind a hedge. {( ^ E -^ „

Mr. Podmore says : —

"November 26th, 1883.

" I saw Mrs. R. yesterday. She told me that they recognised the
voice .vaguely as a well-known one at the time. She thinks that the
coincidence in time was quite exact, because Mrs. W. of B made a
note of the circumstance immediately. Her brother — an old school-fellow
of mine — cannot recollect the incident at all."

[If a written note was made, the girls' experience must have seemed
odder than the " nothing more was thought of it " in Mrs. S.'s account
would imply.]

Mrs. W. of A says : —

" My son was about 17 years old. He had had fever and inflamma-
tion, and was weakened by illness. It was about 12 o'clock. I was
sitting with him, after his washing and dressing, and he seemed quiet and

166 RECIPROCAL CASES. [CHAP.

sleepy, but not asleep. He suddenly sprang forward, pointed his finger,
with arms outstretched, and called out in a voice the loudness of which
astonished me, ' Connie and Margaret ! ' with a stress on each name, ' near
the hedge,' looked wildly at them, and then sank down, tired. I
thought it odd at the time, but, considering it a sort of dream, did not
allude to it. The next day, Mrs. W. called with Connie and Margaret,
and said the girls had heard their names called; had run home ; were
walking by a hedge in their field, had found no one had called them
from B Rectory. The voice sounded familiar, but as far as I can
remember — my daughter will say — it was not distinctly thought to be
Edward's. I at once told my story, as it was too striking not to be
named. They said it was about 12 o'clock. Though he was constantly
delirious in the evening, when the pulse rose, he was never so in the middle
of the day, and there was no appearance of his being so at the time this
occurred.

«M. A. W."
Mrs. W. of B says : —

"August, 1884.

" Connie was staying with us on account of the illness of her brother
Edward, and had — with Margaret — been reading with me one morning.
At about 11.30 they went into the garden to play (they were girls of
about 13 and 14), and in half an hour came up to the window to know
what I wanted. I said 'Nothing,' and that I had not called them,
though they had heard both their names called repeatedly. I asked them
where they were when they heard it, and they said in the next walk —
which, you will remember, is formed on one side by the orchard hedge.
Margaret said directly, ' There, Connie ; I said it was not mother's, but a
boy's voice.' Then I turned to look at the clock — for we had some boys
as pupils then — and I said, ' It would not be one of the boys, for they are
not out of the study ; it is now 12 o'clock, and I hear them coming out.'

" I was to take Connie home that afternoon,1 and, on arriving, of course
my first question was, ' How was Edward V Mrs. W. told me that he had
not been so well, and had been very delirious. She said that morning he
had been calling, ' Margaret ! Connie ! Margaret ! Connie ! Oh, they are
running by a hedge, and won't listen to me.' I did not say what had
happened at home, but asked if she knew at what time this had so
distressed him. She said ' Yes ; ' for she had looked at the clock, hoping
it was nearly time to give him his medicine, which always quieted him, and
was thankful to find it was just 12 o'clock."

Here we seem to have, on the part of the two girls, a telepathic
hallucination, reproducing the exact words that were in the mouth
and ear of the sick boy ; and, on his part, a vision reflected from
their minds, and once more illustrating how what might be described
as clairvoyance may be a true variety of thought-transference. The
suggestion at the end of Mrs. R.'s account must not be over-

1 The other accounts make it probable that it was not till next day that Mrs. W. of
B went to A.

xvii.] RECIPROCAL CASES. 167

looked; but I should be glad to know of precedents for hidden
plough-boys calling out the Christian names of clergymen's daughters
and their friends. Nor do I quite see how such a freak could merit
the designation of a " trick " ; it would surely be a mere piece of
aimless and pointless rudeness — unless, indeed the plough-boy was
enjoying a telepathic chuckle at the idea that his cry might be
confounded with another, which was being simultaneously uttered
five miles off.

It will be seen that the number of these reciprocal cases (even
with the addition of those in the Supplement) is small — so small that
the genuineness of the type might fairly enough be called in question.
There is some danger that our view of the rarer telepathic phenomena
may be unduly affected by the sense of certainty that gradually and
reasonably forms with regard to the broad fact of telepathy itself.
The argument for the reality of telepathy, we must remember,
depends on a mass of narratives so large as to make a universal error
in the essential point of all or nearly all of them exceedingly
improbable ; and is not available in respect of peculiar features, which
are present in only a very small proportion of the alleged cases. For
these, the various possibilities of error so fully discussed in the general
sketch of the evidence (Vol. I., Chap. IV.) may seem quite sufficient
to account ; and the greater the theoretic interest of the peculiarities,
the more jealously must their evidential claims be scrutinised. As to
reciprocality, the reader will form his own opinion. That the
examples should be few, as compared with those of the simpler
telepathic types, cannot at this stage of our inquiry seem unnatural.
For if, amid all the apparent opportunities that human lives present,
the unknown and probably transient conditions of telepathic perci-
pience and of telepathic agency only occasionally chance to coincide,
so as to produce a telepathic phenomenon at all (pp. 77-8) ; and if, of
the two, the conditions of percipience are the rarer, as experimental
thought-transference would lead us to suppose ; then the complete
conditions of a reciprocal case must be rare among the rare. Still, if
they have occurred, they will occur again. If my colleagues and I are
right in supposing the type to be a genuine one, we ought to obtain,
as time goes on, some more well-attested specimens of it ; and to this,
we look forward with considerable confidence.

[CHAP.

CHAPTER XVIII.

COLLECTIVE CASES.

§ 1. THE telepathic cases quoted in the foregoing chapters have almost
all affected a single percipient only ; and the fact that sometimes the
percipient was in company at the time, and that his sensory
experience was unshared by any one present,1 has confirmed the view
(to which all other considerations seemed to converge) that telepathic
affections of the senses are in the most literal sense hallucinations.
But we have already encountered a few cases where the senses of
more than one percipient have been affected ;2 and what awaits us in
the present chapter is the discussion and complete illustration of this
perplexing feature.

Of course the first view which is suggested by the fact that two
or more people have seen or heard the same thing at the same
time is that the sight or sound, however abnormal and unaccountable,
was due to some objective reality within the range of their sense-
organs — in other words, that it was not a hallucination at all.3
Hence those apparently telepathic instances where a sensory
experience, representative of some absent person, has been shared by
more than one percipient, would imply the immediate presence of
some sort of physical wraith, or at any rate of an objective human
presence.

I scarcely know how far the idea of a literal wraith is seriously
entertained by any educated person in the present day. Gaseous
and vaporous ghosts are, I imagine, quite at a discount ; but the
word " ether " seems sometimes to be used as a way out of the

1 See the list of cases given in p. 105, second note.

2 Nos. 14, 36, 169, 254 (first incident), 258, 264, 279, 302 (second incident), 308 ; case
166 is a possible instance. See also the dream-cases 127 and 144.

3 It was in this occasional feature of collective percipience that Falck, in 1692, found
the strongest argument for the production of hallucinations by an external and daemonic
power. See p. 72 of his able and elaborate dissertation against Hobbes and Spinoza, in
DC Dcmonologid recentiorum Autorum.

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 169

difficulty. For many ears the word has, no doubt, a convenient
vagueness ; but, in fact, we know of no mode by which ether can
affect s the retina, except through waves started by luminous sub-
stances of known type. And even if etherial ghosts could be seen,
the auditory phenomena would remain a hopeless obstacle to a
satisfactory physical explanation of them. For even the assumption
of some tenuous and elusive form of matter, which somehow hangs
about in relation to the mysterious ether, seems less desperate
than the assumption that such a tenuous presence could move the
air in the infinitely complex vibration-patterns which correspond
to speech or music — that is to say, could produce at will an effect
of inconceivable difficulty and complexity on certain gross elements
of the known material world.

As to the notion of an objective presence which may affect the
perceptive faculty of several persons without producing changes in
the external world, one sort of case is conceivable which would no
doubt favour it — e.g., if two persons, situated at some distance from
one another, saw the appearance in the respective relations of dis-
tance and posture which a real object of the same kind would bear
to them — one of them, it might be, seeing a full face, and the other
a profile. But I know of no examples of this sort. And as a mere
theory, the notion in question may be left with a single general
comment ; for though our path skirts, it had better not enter, the
metaphysical labyrinth suggested by the words " objective reality."
Let it be conceded then that, where there is a consensus of percep-
tion, it becomes a nice question for Idealism to determine how
far, or in what sense, the percept lacks an objective basis. To put an
extreme case — suppose all the seeing world, save one individual, had
a visual percept, the object of which nevertheless eluded all physical
tests : would the solitary individual be justified in saying that all
the others were victims of a subjective delusion ? and if he said so,
would they agree with him ? But then in this case, or in a less
extreme one of the same kind, we might at any rate ask one of the
perceivers to tell us what meaning he can attach to the objectivity
of his percept, beyond that it has its existence in other minds besides
his own. If he fails to supply us with any further meaning, on •
him surely lies the onus of proving that the conditions of the
percept lie outside the perceiving minds ; and if no proof be forth-
coming, I then see no definite way of distinguishing this " objective "
view of " collective hallucinations " from the view to be considered

170 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

immediately, which regards the community of percipience as a form
of thought-transference.1

" But " — some objectors may say — "the question has been begged
by assuming that the collective percept eludes physical tests. True,
apparitions have not yet been subjected to spectroscopic analysis, nor
have phantasmal remarks been recorded by the phonograph ; but
suppose that the form of a dying person not only appears, but opens
the door or the window, and the door or the window remains open,
thus affording to the muscles of the servant who closes it a test of a
physical change in the external world — what account is to be given
of this ? " Now clearly such phenomena, even if established, would
afford no convincing analogy by which to judge of cases where no
similar physical tests are included. But, as a matter of fact, no
records of the sort that we have met with have reached the evi-
dential standard which would entitle them to a place in this book
(see Vol. I., p. 165) ; and until they are established by irrefragable
evidence, there is another analogy which has in every way a prior
claim — namely, the facts of telepathy as so far set forth. Cannot
our further facts be explained without going beyond the purely
psychical transference for which we believe that we have ample
evidence ?

Let us see in what ways a theory of purely psychical impres-
sions could cover the phenomena of collective hallucination. Two
possible views of what may happen present themselves. The first of
these would apply only to veridical cases — cases which are "telepathic"
in the literal sense. On this view the simultaneous experiences would
be traced to a cause external to the percipients ; but this cause would
not be a real object within the range of the percipients' senses, but a
real condition of an absent person. A, who is passing through some
crisis at a distance, produces a simultaneous telepathic impression on
the minds of B and of C, who happen to be together; both B and C
project this impression as a hallucination of the senses, in the way
that has been so fully considered ; and the hallucinations more or less
nearly resemble each other.

The second view would apply equally to the cases which are, and
to those which are not, telepathic, in this literal sense of relating to a

1 A psychical condition outside the perceiving minds might, no doubt, be found in
"disembodied intelligence." For the present, it is enough to remark that this change
of " agency " to some further mind would leave the nature of the phenomenon unchanged.
Experience thus caused may be called objective, if we will, but it is still thought-
transference ; just as in Berkeley's view the whole objective universe was only thought-
transference in excelsis.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 171

distant agent. The view is that the hallucination of one percipient,
however caused, begets that of the other, by a process of thought-
transference ; the hallucination is in itself, so to speak, infectious. B
and C are together, and B has a hallucination — it may be veridical and
due to a telepathic impression from the distant A, or it may be non-
veridical and due to a spontaneous pathological disturbance of B's
own brain ; and this experience of B's is then communicated to C,
whose brain follows suit and projects a kindred image. The process
in fact would strongly recall those cases of simultaneous dreaming
where one dream may be regarded as the cause of the other.1 It
would be a fresh example of the psychological identity between the
sleeping and the waking hallucinations on which so much stress has
already been laid.

Such are the two possible views ; and we have now to decide how
far either, or both, may be reasonably entertained. I may state at
once that in my opinion the best solution that the problem at present
admits of involves a certain combination of the two (see § 7 below) ;
but I shall consult clearness by first considering each of them
separately.

§ 2. First, then, as regards the theory of the simultaneous origi-
nation of two or more hallucinations by a distant agent — we
certainly know of no reason why a state of the agent which is
telepathically effective at all, should be bound to confine its effects
to a single percipient. That it generally does so confine them,
may be easily explained by supposing a special susceptibility on the
percipient's part, or a special rapport between him and the agent ;
but that occasionally the impression should extend to others,
who have also been sympathetically related to the agent, may
seem no very astounding fact. Now if the impression were a
merely inward experience, an impression of a merely ideal or
emo.tional kind, and did not give rise to actual hallucination,
this account of the matter might be plausible enough : it would
apply for instance to Mr. H. S. Thompson's case, Vol. I., p. 99. But it
will be remembered that we have seen reason to regard the
hallucination as distinctively the percipient's work — as something
projected by him under a telepathic stimulus ; and we have found these*
sensory projections to take various forms according to the projector's
idiosyncrasies. We have found, moreover, that the time during

1 Vol. i., pp. 314-20, and the opening cases in Chap. iii. of the Supplement.

172 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

which such hallucinations may take place extends over several hours
— that we cannot name an exact moment at which the telepathic
message will reach consciousness, or externalise itself to the sense. It
becomes, then, extremely improbable that two or more persons should
independently invest their respective telepathic impressions, at the
same moment, with the same sensory form ; that they should all at
once see the same figure, or hear the same sound, in apparently the
same place. We should expect to find one of them embodying it in
sound, and another, perhaps half an hour later, in visible shape ; or
one of them embodying it in sound or shape, and another only
conscious of it as an inward idea ; and so on. And for divergences
of this sort, the evidence, though it exists, is small in amount.

But this is not all. On the theory that joint telepathic hallucina-
tions are all exclusively and directly due to a distant agent, there is
one thing that we should not expect to happen, and one thing that
we should expect to happen. (1) We should not expect the group of
percipients to include anyone who was a stranger to the agent ; or
who was not personally in such relations with the agent as would
have rendered it natural for him, had he chanced to be alone at the
time, to suffer the same telepathic experience. Nevertheless, cases
exist where such an outside person has shared in the perception.
And (2) we should expect that in a fair proportion of cases two or more
percipients would share the perception, though they were not in each
other's company at the time. For on the theory that is being
considered, there would be no virtue in the mere local proximity of
the percipients to one another ; the agent is supposed to affect them
by dint of his respective relations to each of them, which have
nothing to do with their being together or apart. Now, in point of
fact, we have a group of cases where the persons jointly affected have
been apart, but they are disproportionately rare in comparison with
the experiences shared by percipients who have been together;
and in several of them, moreover, B and C, the two percipients, were
near each other, and had been to some extent sharing the same life —
conditions which may have had their share in the effect (see
pp. 266-8). However, the existence of this type might no doubt
be regarded as an argument for the occasional production ab extra
of several similar and simultaneous hallucinations ; and our few
specimens may conveniently be cited at once.

I have already given (Vol. I., pp. 362-3) a case where two vivid
dreams of a quite unexpected death were dreamt by persons who

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 173

were in the same house, but not in the same room. The following
is a somewhat similar instance, but only one of the experiences was a
dream. Mrs. Bettany, of 2, Eckington Villas, Ashbourne Grove,

Dulwich (the narrator of case 20,) writes : —

"June, 1885.

(309) " On the evening of, I think, March 23rd, 1883, I was seized
with an unaccountable anxiety about a neighbour, whose name I just
knew, but with whom I was not on visiting terms. She was a lady who
appeared to be in very good health. I tried to shake off the feeling, but
I could not, and after a sleepless night, in which I constantly thought
of her as dying, I decided to send a servant to the house to ask if all
were well. The answer I received was, ' Mrs. J. died last night.'

" Her daughter afterwards told me that the mother had startled her
by saying, ' Mrs. Bettany knows I shall die.'

" I had never felt an interest in the lady before that memorable
night. After the death, the family left the neighbourhood, and I have
not seen any of them since.

"JEANIE G WYNNE BETTANY."

We find from the Register of Deaths that Mrs. J. died on March 23,
1883.

The following is the evidence of the servant who was sent to
inquire : —

"January, 1886.

" I remember Mrs. Bettany sending me to inquire if all were well at
Mrs. J.'s. The answer they gave me was that Mrs. J. was dead. Mrs.
Bettany sent me to inquire, because she had a presentiment that Mrs. J.
was dead or dying."

Mrs. Bettany adds : —

" My cook, to whom I had not mentioned my presentiment, remarked
to me on the same morning : 'I have had such a horrible dream about
Mrs. J., I think she must be going to die.' She distinctly remembers that
some one (she does not know who, and I think never did) told her in her
dream that Mrs. J. was dead."

The following is the first-hand evidence to the dream : —

"January llth, 1886.

" I remember that some one in my dream said ' Mrs. J. is dead.' I do
not remember the rest of the dream, but I know it was horrible. I
told Mrs. Bettany at the time, and she then told me about her presentiment
about Mrs. J. «

[M. Went has occasionally dreamt of the deaths of people she knows,
without any correspondence.]

This case would seem to have been in some way "reciprocal";
and it is unfortunate that we cannot obtain further details of the
dying woman's impression.

174 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

The next is a waking and sensory example of the same kind. It
was first obtained in writing from Mrs. Fagan, of Bovey Tracey,
Newton Abbot, the mother of one of the percipients ; and her
account exemplifies the inaccuracies which second-hand evidence may
sometimes introduce, without really affecting the case in any vital

point.

" 1883.

(310) "While the Rev. C. C. T. Fagan [Mrs. Fagan's son], then
Chaplain of Sealkote, India, was dressing for dinner on Christmas Day
evening, 1876, his cousin, Christopher1 Fagan, being similarly employed
in an adjacent room, both heard the name ' Fagan ' called. The Rev. C.
C. T. Fagan, though thinking it strange his cousin should thus address him,
yet knowing no one else was in the house, went to him asking what he
wanted, why he had not called him 'Charlie ' as usual, and remarking
that the voice was like that of Captain Clayton, a cavalry officer, who had
been under his pastoral charge, but was then at a distant station. His
cousin replied that he too had heard the voice, and probably it was that
of Major Collis, whom they were expecting to dinner. Upon this they
adjourned to the drawing-room, where they found the Major, but as he
had only just come in, he had neither called nor heard the voice.

" While telling him of what had occurred, they all three heard the same
voice repeat the same name, and Major Collis remarked, ' It is like
Clayton's voice.'

" The next morning a telegram was received to the effect that Captain
Clayton died at that hour from an accident received while playing at polo."

Major Collis told our friend, the Rev. A. T. Fryer, of Clerkenwell,
that Mr. Fagan and his cousin were standing in the doorway of the drawing-
room talking, when they heard the call, " Fagan." He himself was
dressing in his room, and they called out to him to know what he wanted ;
but he had not spoken, nor had he heard the call. Whilst they were talking
together, the voice came a second time, and all three heard it.

On being applied to with regard to the discrepancy between these two
accounts, the Rev. C. C. T. Fagan writes : —

" Sitapur, August 25th, 1883.

" So far as my memory serves, the statement of Major Collis is
correct as to the curious coincidence of which he has told you. He was
certainly staying in my house at the time, and was not a guest merely
invited to dinner — as my cousin was. I cannot now say who suggested
the voice sounded like that of Captain Clayton. « Q. C. T. FAGAN."

Mr. Fagan says, however, in another letter : "I am under the
impression that my cousin did not hear the voice." He adds : " At or
about the time in question, and on more occasions than one, I have
imagined that I heard people calling me, but, I may add, this experience
is now seldom or ever happening to me."

1 By a slip, Mrs. Fagan has called her nephew by her son's name — Christopher, instead
of George.

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 175

Major Collis writes to us on August 2, 1884 : —

" 3, Barton Terrace, Dawlish.

" In reply to the questions you ask, I have never had experience of
any other auditory hallucination : neither have I ever had any hallucina-
tions of the senses whatever. "G. COLLIS."

Mr. Fagan's cousin, Lieutenant G. Forbes Fagan, of the 10th Lancers,
writes to us : — "

"Simla, July 31st, 1885.

" I remember that on the afternoon of the day on which Captain
Clayton met his death, I was in the Rev. C. Fagan's house at Sealkote ;
and he said he had heard his mother's voice calling to him, and that
something was sure to happen. I heard no voice myself. When news
arrived of Captain Clayton's death, my cousin said the voice must have
had some connection with it. " G. F. FAGAN."

In an interview with Mrs. Fagan, Professor Sidgwick learnt that Captain
Clayton was intimate with the Rev. C. C. T. Fagan, and also knew Major
Collis.

The Calcutta Englishman of December 28th, contains a telegram of
December 26th : " Last evening Captain Clayton, extra aide-de-camp to
the Viceroy, was thrown while playing polo, and died during the night."

In answer to a question as to the hour of the accident, Major Lord
William Beresford writes to us : —

"As well as I remember, it was 6.15 in the evening of Christmas
Day, 1876, and he died in my arms exactly as the clock struck 12. He
never spoke after he fell."

[The somewhat ragged form in which this evidence is presented is due
to the fact that the Rev. C. C. T. Fagan and Major Collis are understood to
dislike the subject, and that we have scrupled to press them. But it seems
quite certain that at a time closely corresponding to that of the accident, two
percipients, one of whom has never had any other hallucination, heard a
voice which belonged to no one in their vicinity. As to the immediate
connection of the voice with Captain Clayton, the evidence is not so clear ;
but as regards Lieut. Fagan's recollections, we cannot but remark the
extreme unlikelihood that the two hearers should imagine Mrs. Fagan's
voice as calling her son by his surname ; and also the unlikelihood that,
if it was her voice that her son recognised, he should have altered this
interesting point in the account which he gave her. The case is, of
course, to some extent weakened by the fact that the Rev. C. C. T. Fagan
has had other auditory hallucinations. It is worth adding, however,
that one of these experiences, when he heard his mother's voice urgently
calling him, proved to have coincided with a very sudden and exceptional
longing for his presence on her part (Supplement, Chap. VI., § 1) ; and
it may possibly have been the mention of this fact that caused a confusion
in Lieut. Fagan's memory, and led him to associate Mrs. Fagan with the
present experience.]

The following case is part of a record of some singular hypnotic
experiences, of which some further specimens will be given in

176 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

Chap. I., § 3, of the Supplement. Mrs. John Evens, of Oldbank,

Enniskillen, narrates as follows : —

"December 4th, 1885.

(311) " With regard to the apparition or optical illusion, I have a perfect
and clear remembrance. It occurred after the experience related [i.e.,
after a cataleptic fit produced under hypnotic influence]. The operator
had left me with an earnest request to my husband to send for, or
fetch him, should anything seem to require it.

" I was wide awake, and enjoying the freedom from pain ; my room
being carefully darkened. The operator had, while with me, been
seated on a chair midway between my bed and a chest of drawers — about
three feet from each. I was thinking very gratefully of the relief I had
experienced, when I noticed a blueish-white light round the chair. It
seemed to be nickering and darting in a large oval, but gradually con-
centrated on a figure seated on the chair.1 The appearance did not
startle me in the least ; my first thought was, ' It is Mr. T., a young
officer with whom we were very intimate, and who had been in the
house that evening. But the expression of the mouth struck me then,
and I thought ' Can it be Mr. D. ? ' — a dear friend who had died some
little time before. All this time the face seemed to be changing, and, as
it were, settling. Suddenly it flashed into my mind ' It is Mr. B.' (the
father of the operator). I did not know this gentleman at all, except
from having seen his photograph, but had no doubt on the subject.
(Curiously enough his mouth and that of. Mr. D.'s were singularly alike
in expression.) The figure sat in a kind of dim halo. I felt no sur-
prise ; nor did I speak to it, but thought, ' Oh, you have come to find
P. (the son) ; he has been here all the evening, but has gone home now.'
As I thought this the halo gradually diffused itself, as it had before
become concentrated, and the figure vanished. Besides the distinctness of
feature, a movement, of crossing and uncrossing the knees two or three
times, struck me.

" That same night, and it must have been nearly at the same time,
the friend who had magnetised me was awoke by hearing his name
called twice. His impression was that I needed his aid, and he was
prepared to come (he was living a mile off), if he heard the call repeated.
But it was not. The next day, when I saw him, without telling him
any of this, I asked, ' Has your father any noticeable habit or trick of
movement ? ' At first he said ' No,' and then, ' unless you would
describe as such a way he has of frequently crossing and uncrossing his
knees. He has varicose veins, and is restless at times ! '

" This was the whole matter. The father, who dislikes such subjects,
would never say whether he had dreamed or been thinking intently of
his son ; but probably it was so. " AGNES EVENS."

In a letter dated 18th December, 1885, Mrs. Evens writes that she
thinks the occurrence took place in September or October, 1881. She
has never experienced any other visual hallucination.

In answer to inquiries, she adds : —

1 As to the oval, see the remarks on case 220 ; as to the gradual appearance and
gradual disappearance, see Chap, xii., §§ 2 and 3, also above, p. 73, note, and p. 97 ; and
compare case 315 below.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 177

(1) "I cannot be sure as to the time at which I saw the appearance,
but, putting circumstances together, I should think between 12 and 1
o'clock — nearer the latter hour.

(2) " I am perfectly certain that I uttered no sound ; the phantom's
disappearance seemed to answer to the thought that passed through my
mind, ' You want Preston ; he has been here all the evening, but went
back to Fort Tourgis some time since.'

(3) " I had not any wish for his presence. I was lying in quiet
enjoyment of the relief from agonising pain and quivering nerves, in
which condition one has no active line of thought. I very likely
thought about him, with a lazy kind of gratitude to him as the author of
the relief I was experiencing."

Captain Battersby, R.A., F.R.A.S., of Ordnance House, Enniskillen,
son-in-law of Mrs. Evens, writes : —

"December 21st, 1885.

" I had mesmerised Mrs. E. for several months, for severe neuralgia,
with the view of affording her natural sleep. One night she had been
in the mesmeric trance, and had been awoke by me, and I had returned
to barracks — situated about half-a-mile from her house — leaving her in
her room. I went to bed, and to sleep, and was awakened with a start
by hearing my name called very distinctly. I sat up in bed, and
looked for the caller, but saw no one. It was too dark to look at my
watch, so that I cannot say what the time may have been. It oc-
curred to me at the time that Mrs. E. might want me for something.
I did not recognise the voice, and indeed had no chance of doing so,
as it did not call again. In the morning I went to see Mrs. E., in
order to find out whether she had had any unusual experience. She
asked me if anything had happened to me the night before. I said
' Yes,' and asked her why she put the question. She said, ' Has your
father a habit of moving one leg over the other, now and then, in a
restless way ? ' This was the case. She then said, about 1 a.m. she had
been roused from sleep, and saw a phosphorescent appearance on the
chair near her bed, which resolved itself into a human figure, recognised
by her as my father from a photograph in my possession. It did not
speak, but seemed to ask her mentally ' Where is Preston ? ' To which
she responded, also mentally, ' He was here, but is gone home ' ; whereon
the figure disappeared. I was somewhat alarmed at the occurrence, and
wrote to ask if my father was well. He was so ; and did not remember
having any dream of me on that night. Mrs. E. particularly remarked
his habit of crossing first one leg and then the other, of which I had not
previously told her.

" T. PRESTON BATTERSBY."

In answer to inquiries, Captain Battersby says : —

" I beg to say that at no time, except on the occasion referred to by
me in my previous letter, have I woke from sleep with the impression of
having been called In fact this was the only occasion in my life in which
I heard or saw anything unusual."

The " collective " character of these two experiences is clearly
very doubtful ; they may not have been due to any agency on the

VOL II. N

178 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

part of Captain Battersby's father, or connected with each other. But
considering that the accidental coincidence of the two unique ex-
periences would be most improbable, and that a hypnotic rapport
probably existed between Captain Battersby and his patient, it is a
reasonable supposition that his mind was either the source or the
channel of a telepathic communication to hers.

The next case was received from Mrs. Poison, of 4, Nouvelle Route

de Yillefranche, Nice.

"January, 1884.

(3 1 2) " Some years since, when living at Woolstone Lodge, Woolstone,
Berks, of which parish and church, &c., &c., my husband was clerk in
Holy Orders, I left the fireside family party one evening after tea, to see
if our German bonne could manage a little wild Cornish girl to prepare
her school-room for the morning. As I reached the top of the stairs a
lady passed me who had some time left us. She was in black silk with a
muslin ' cloud ' over her head and shoulders, but her silk rustled. I could
just have a glance only of her face. She glided fast and noiselessly (but
for the silk) past me, and was lost down two steps at the end of a long
passage that led only into my private boudoir, and had no other exit. I
had barely exclaimed ' Oh, Caroline,' when I felt she was a something un-
natural, and rushed down to the drawing-room again, and sinking on my
knees by my husband's side, fainted, and it was with difficulty I was
restored to myself again. The next morning, I saw they rather joked me
at first ; but it afterwards came out that the little nursery girl, while
cleaning her grate, had been so frightened by the same appearance, ' a lady
sitting near her, in black, with white all over her head and shoulders, and
her hands crossed on her bosom,' that nothing would induce her to go
into the room again ; and they had been afraid to tell me over night of
this confirmation of the appearance, thinking it would shake my nerves
still more than it had done.

" As chance would have it, many of our neighbours called on us the
next morning — Mr. Tufnell, of Uffington, near Faringdon, Archdeacon
Berens, Mr. Atkins, and others. All seemed most interested, and Mr.
Tufnell would not be content without rioting down particulars in his own
pocket-book, and making me promise to write for inquiries that very night,
for my cousin, Mrs. Henry Gibbs. She had been staying with us some
time previously for a few days, and I had a letter half written to her in
the paper case.

" I wrote immediately to my uncle (the Rev. C. Crawley, of Hartpury,
near Gloucester,) and aunt, and recounted all that had happened. By
return of post, ' Caroline is very ill at Belmont ' (their family place
then), ' and not expected to live ' ; and die she did on the very day or
evening she paid me that visit. The shock had been over-much for a not
very strong person, and I was one of the very few members of the
Crawley or Gibbs family who could not follow the funeral.

"GEORGIANA POLSON."

[The three gentlemen whom Mrs. Poison mentions as having been
immediately informed of her experience, have since died. If the narrative

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 179

should happen to meet the eye of any near relative of the late Rev. G.
Tufnell, it might perhaps be possible to find out whether the entry in the
pocket-book is still existing. According to the account, it would appear
that the Rev. C. Crawley had not heard of the death on the second
morning after its occurrence. This may seem a little unlikely (as he was
a relative living at no very great distance), but is still quite possible.]

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Poison adds : —

" I have never before or since suffered from any experience of the
kind [i.e., had any visual hallucination].

" I cannot give you the date, it was so long ago. Still, the past days
are often present with me, and the scenes of that night are as fresh in
remembrance as if all had occurred yesterday.

"I have no idea whatever what became of the Cornish nursery girl.

" I wrote to my aunt and uncle, near Gloucester, to tell them of what
had occurred. They replied they had heard Mrs. Gibbs (Caroline) was
very ill, and the next communication informed us of her departure ; but I
do not remember whether it took place earlier in the afternoon or later at
night than when I saw her."

The following is from the lady who was with Mrs. Poison as governess
at the time : —

" Clarence Villa, Church Road, Watford.

"January llth, 1884.

" I do not in the least object to let you know what I remember of
the incident you mention. Many years ago Mr. and Mrs. Poison, with
the children and myself, were sitting one evening in the drawing-room at
Woolstone. In the middle of the evening Mrs. Poison left the room, but
soon returned ; remaining silent, I looked up, and saw her drop down on
the rug fainting. When she recovered, she told us she had seen Mrs.
Gibbs on before her in the long passage.

" I recollect hearing that the little Cornish girl said she had seen that
same apparition while cleaning her grate. As to the date of the incident
I can only say that, to the best of my recollection, it happened before the
year 1851. " H. L.MACKENZIE."

We find from the Times obituary that Mrs. Gibbs died on February
16, 1850.

In the next case one of the experiences was emotional, not sensory,
but was apparently of a very marked sort. The account is from an
intelligent informant, who has been for many years in the service of
a family known to the present writer. Neither the witness nor (he
believes) his mother ever had any other experience of the sort. His
mother has been dead for some years.

" 9, Blandford Place, Clarence Gate, Regent's Park.

"October 21st, 1882.

(313) "In the winter 1850-51, I, Charles Matthews, was living as
butler, 25 years of age, with General Morse at Troston Hall, near Bury
St. Edmunds. My mother, Mary Ann Matthews, was in the same establish-
ment as cook and housekeeper, a very upright and conscientious woman,
VOL. n. N 2

180 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

and was much liked by all the servants excepting the ladies' maid, whose
name was Susan, but her family-name I have forgotten. This Susan
rendered herself disliked by all in consequence of her tale-bearing and
mischief -making propensities, but she stood in some awe of my mother,
whose firmness of character kept her in check to a great extent.

" Susan fell ill of jaundice, for which she was medically treated for
some months at Troston Hall, but ultimately was removed to Bury St.
Edmunds Hospital, and placed in the servants' ward, at General Morse's
expense, where she died about a week after admission. He used to send
a woman from the village to the hospital, seven miles distant, to make
inquiries, on such days as the carriage did not go to Bury St. Edmunds ;
and on a certain Saturday the woman went, but did not return until the
Sunday evening, when she said she had found Susan unconscious on her
arrival, and as death was evidently approaching, she was permitted to
remain in the ward until the end.

" During this Saturday night the following mystery occurred, which
has ever since been a puzzle to myself. Being asleep, I was awakened
with or by a sudden feeling of terror. I stared through the darkness of
my bedroom, but could not see anything, but felt overcome by an un-
natural horror or dread, and covered myself with the bed-clothes,
regularly scared. My room door was in a narrow passage leading to my
mother's room, and anyone passing would almost touch my door. I passed
the remaining portion of the night in restlessness. In the morning I met
my mother on coming downstairs, and observed that she looked ill and
pale, and most unusually depressed. I asked ' What's the matter ? ' She
replied, ' Nothing ; don't ask me.' An hour or two passed, and I still saw
that something was amiss, and I felt determined to know the cause, and
my mother seemed equally bent on not satisfying me. At last I said,
' Has it anything to do with Susan ? ' She burst into tears and said,
' What makes you ask that question ? ' I then told her of my scare
during the night, and she then related to me the following 'strange
story ' : —

" ' I was awakened by the opening of my bedroom door, and saw, to
my horror, Susan enter in her night-dress. She came straight towards my
bed, turned down the clothes, and laid herself beside me, and I felt a cold
chill all down my side where she seemed to touch me.1 I suppose I fainted,
as I lost all recollection for some time, and when I came to myself the
apparition had gone — but of one thing I am sure, and that is tlwi it was
not a dream.'

" We heard by the village woman on her return the Sunday evening,
that Susan died in the middle of the night, and that previous to
becoming unconscious her whole talk was about 'returning to Troston
Hall.' We had had no apprehension whatever of the death. We thought
she had gone to the hospital, not because she was in danger, but for the
sake of special treatment.

" This is a simple relation of facts, so far as I can state them. I
myself was not a superstitious or simple fellow, at the time, having seen
a good deal of the world ; but I have never yet been able to satisfy my
own mind as to the why or wherefore of the occurrence."

1 Among transient hallucinations of the sane — alike of the purely subjective and of
the telepathic class — affections of three senses are extremely rare (p. 25, note).

xvin.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 181

Mr. Matthews tells me that he has never had any similar sensation ;
and he believes that the hallucination was unique in the experience of
his mother, who died some years ago.

In the remaining cases the percipients were much more widely
separated ; but unfortunately the evidence as to identity of time is
very far from complete. The following account is from Mrs. Coote,

of 28, Duke Street, Grosvenor Square, W.

"July 29th, 1885.

(314) " On Easter Wednesday, 1872, my sister-in-law, Mrs. W., sailed
with her husband and three young children from Liverpool in the steamer,
' Sarmatian,' for Boston, U.S., where they arrived in due course and
settled. In the following November she was seized with, and died from,
suppressed small-pox, at that time raging in Boston. About the end of
November, or the beginning of December in the same year, I was dis-
turbed one morning before it was light, as near as may be between 5 and
6 a.m., by the appearance of a tall figure, in a long night-dress, bending
over the bed. I distinctly recognised this figure to be no other than my
sister-in-law, Mrs. W., who, as I felt, distinctly touched me. My husband,
who was beside me asleep at the time, neither saw nor felt anything.

" This appearance was also made to an aged aunt, residing at this time
at Theydon Bois, near Epping, Essex. She is now alive, aged over 80
years, and residing at Hextable, near Dartford, in Kent. She is still in
full possession of all her faculties. She told my husband as recently as
the 4th inst., that the appearance came to her in the form of a bright
light from a dark corner of her bedroom in the early morning. It was
so distinct that she not only recognised her niece, Mrs. W., but she
actually noticed the needlework on her long night-dress ! This appearance
was also made to my husband's half-sister, at that time unmarried, and
residing at Stanhope Gardens. The last named was the first to receive
the announcement of the death of Mrs. W., in a letter from the widower
dated December (day omitted), 1872, from 156, Eighth Street, South
Boston, still preserved. The death was announced, among other papers
(as my husband has recently learned), in the Boston Herald. A com-
parison of dates, as far as they could be made in two of the cases, served
to show the appearance occurred after the same manner, and about the
same time, i.e., at the time of, or shortly after, the death of the deceased.
Neither myself nor the aged Mrs. B., nor my husband's half-sister, have
experienced any appearance of the kind before or since. It is only
recently, when my husband applied to his half-sister to hunt up the
Boston letter, that we learnt for the first time of this third appearance."

Mr. Coote writes to us as follows : —

" That Mrs. Coote's ' vision ' occurred within a week of the death of
Mrs. W., in Boston, U.S., is undoubted ; and without any effort to make
our memories more precise, I may add, that from the first I have always
thought that the most marked feature in the case was (judging, of course,
from an opinion formed at the time when the circumstances were fresh in
my memory) that it occurred within the 24 hours after death. I am
afraid after this lapse of time that nothing conclusive can be arrived at as
to ' times ' in the other two cases, beyond the general idea that still

182 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

obtains in the minds of both the aged Mrs. B. and Mrs. , that the

visions occurred about the same time as that of Mrs. Coote, and after the
same manner. Mrs. Coote desires me to add that to this hour she has
never exchanged ideas upon this vision, even with the aged Mrs. B.,
which precludes all possibility of collusion in the matter.

" C. H. COOTE."

[It is not possible to obtain a first-hand account of the vision from
Mr. Coote's half-sister at present.]

The final example of this type is from Mr. de Guerin, of 98, Sand-
gate Road, Folkestone, who has had another apparently telepathic
experience (Vol. I., p. 424). He has had no subjective hallucinations.

" 1883.

(315) " The first instance occurred when I was in Shanghai. It was the
month of May, 1854. The night was very warm, and I was in bed, lying
on my back, wide awake, contemplating the dangers by which we were
then surrounded, from a threatened attack by the Chinese. I gradually
became aware there was something in the room ; it appeared like a thin
white fog, a misty vapour,1 hanging about the foot of the bed. Fancying
it was merely the effect of a moonbeam, I took but little notice, but
after a few moments I plainly distinguished a figure which I recognised
as that of my sister Fanny. At first the expression of her face was sad,
but it changed to a sweet smile, and she bent her head towards me as if
she recognised me. I was too much fascinated with the appearance to
speak, although it did not cause me the slightest fear. The vision seemed
to disappear gradually in the same manner as it came. We afterwards
learned that on the same day my sister died — almost suddenly. I
immediately wrote a full description of what I had seen to my sister,
Mrs. Elmslie (the wife of the Consul at Canton), but before it reached
her, I had received a letter from her, giving me an almost similar
description of what she had seen the same night, adding, ' I am sure dear
Fanny is gone.'

" When I promised that I would send you these particulars I at once
wrote to my sister, Mrs. Elmslie, and she replies, ' I do not think I was
awake when Fanny appeared to me, but. I immediately awoke and saw
her as you describe. I stretched out my arms to her and cried ' Fanny !
Fanny ! ' She smiled upon me, as if sorry to leave, then suddenly
disappeared.'

" When this occurred we [i.e., Mr. de Guerin and Mrs. Elmslie] were
upwards of 1,000 miles apart, and neither of us had a thought of her being
seriously, much less dangerously ill. Before her death she had spoken of
us both to those around her bedside. She died in Jersey, on the 30th
May, 1854, between 10 and 11 at night."

The Jersey Register of Deaths confirms the date given.

Mr. de Guerin kindly applied to Mrs. Elmslie for a further account.
In her reply, she rightly remarks that at such a distance of time memory
of details is unreliable, and is not sure " whether that which took place
was in the nature of a dream or of a vision." She desires, therefore,

1 Cf. cases 193, 194, 311, 332.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 183

that her full description of what she saw shall not be published ; but says
that the face was unmistakeable. She adds : —

" I really forget whether it appeared immediately at the time of our
dear sister's death; but I know my impression at the time was that it fore-
shadowed such an event, the news of which in due course came by mail."

In conversation, Mr. de Guerin told me that the figure appeared self-
luminous (see Chap. XII., § 7). He is certain that his own and Mrs.
Elmslie's visions were on the same night, and that his own was about
1 1 o'clock. He cannot be certain whether the death took place at 1 1 o'clock
p.m., of the previous day, in which case it must have preceded the visions
by some twelve hours ; or 1 1 o'clock p.m. of the same day, in which
case it must have followed the visions by about twelve hours. Mr. de
Guerin further told me that, though in a decline, his sister had been
very decidedly better of late, and he was in no sort of anxiety about
her. The last account had been that she was gaining strength and flesh.
The death was extraordinarily sudden.

§ 3. I turn now to the second of the two theories above
propounded — the theory that one percipient catches the hallucination
from another by a process of thought-transference. This is certainly
the explanation that would suggest itself in telepathic cases where
one of the percipients has previously had no relations, or only slight
relations, with the distant agent. But clearly the most conclusive
evidence for the theory of infection would be derived from cases
involving no distant " agent " at all ; cases which in their inception
are pathologic, not telepathic — purely subjective delusions on the part
of some one present — but which proceed to communicate themselves
to some other person or persons. If it can be shown that this self-pro-
pagation is an occasional property of hallucinations as such, there will
be no difficulty in extending the same explanation to cases where the
hallucination is in its inception due to a distant agent. If B's purely
subjective hallucination may affect C. it is only what we should
a priori expect that B's telepathic hallucination might affect C : such
communicability would merely be one more of those points of resem-
blance', which we have already seen to be so numerous, between the
purely subjective and telepathic classes. And as collective hallucina-
tions even of subjective or non- veridical origin (i.e., not due to the
critical situation of some distant agent) would constitute in them-
selves a form of thought-transference, no excuse is needed for
examining them here at some length.

What evidence, then, do we find that hallucinations of the
senses, as such, may be infectious ? It must be allowed at starting
that no property of the sort has ever been attributed to them by

184 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

psychologists of repute r1 the doctrine would be as new to science as
every other variety of telepathic affection. This, however, is easily
accounted for. We have already seen that psychologists have
never made hallucinations, or at any rate transient hallucinations
of the sane, the subject of careful collection and tabulation; and
it is among the sane rather than the insane2 that we should expect
any phenomenon of thought-transference to present itself. It is
therefore not surprising that the rare and sporadic evidence for
collective hallucinations should have escaped notice. But if, on the
one hand, collective hallucinations have not been recognised by science,
on the other hand phenomena have sometimes been described by that
title which have no sort of claim to it. It is here that the real
importance of distinguishing illusions from hallucinations lies ;
and I cannot well proceed without first making this distinction plain.
Illusion consists either in perceiving a totally wrong object in
place of the right one, as when Don Quixote's imagination trans-
formed the windmills into giants ; or in investing the right object
with wrong attributes, as when the stone lion on Northumberland
House was seen to wag its tail.3 Either sort of illusion may
easily be collective. The error is not in the actual sensory
impression, which is given by the real object and is common to all
present, but in the subsequent act of judgment by which the nature
of the object is determined ; and in this act of judgment one
person has every opportunity of being influenced by another. In the
attitude of trying to imagine what further attributes will fit in
naturally with those which the senses perceive, and will with them
compose some known object, the mind is almost at the mercy of
external suggestion. We see this constantly exemplified in cases
where a group of people are puzzling as to the nature of some barely
visible object, or of some imperfectly heard sound : as soon as some-
one expresses an opinion, someone else is pretty sure to endorse it,
and to see or hear the thing in the suggested sense, though on nearer
approach this may prove to have been incorrect. Even in cases

1 This was written before the appearance of Dr. E. von Hartmann's tract on Spiritism
(lately translated by Mr. C. C. Massey), in which he treats the apparitions seen at seances
as collective hallucinations ; but he regards the influence exercised on the sitters by the
medium as to some extent exceptional in kind.

2 As an instance of the insusceptibility of the insane to abnormal influences, it is
worth noting that they are peculiarly difficult to hypnotise. On the other hand, I ought
to state that the 2nd chapter of the Supplement contains two cases of what looks like
telepathic affection of a person of more or less unsound mind.

3 I have never discovered on what authority this anecdote rests ; but such an illusion
is, I believe, quite possible.

XVIIL] . COLLECTIVE CASES. 185

where we feel as if we were right beyond the possibility of mistake,
it often needs an effort to realise how little is given us, and how
much we ourselves supply. A few slight sensory signs will introduce
to the mind a whole array of attributes that have been associated
with them on other occasions ; the whole is then taken to be a single
and immediate perception of the object ; and since the actual sensory
signs may be common to several different groups of attributes — i.e.,
to several different objects — it may easily happen that they suggest
some group which is not the object actually present. For instance,
the slight sensory signs which Scott would normally have interpreted
as the folds of coats and plaids hanging in a dimly-lit hall, were
interpreted by him, at a moment when the idea of Byron was
running strongly in his head, as the figure of the deceased poet.1
Here the idea which happened to be dominant at the moment was
what determined the false judgment ; and such a dominant idea may,
of course, often operate upon many minds at once; as when, in a
conflagration at the Crystal Palace, a sympathetic crowd watched the
struggles of an agonised chimpanzee — alias a piece of tattered
blind — in the roof; or when a horrified crew recognised in a piece of old
wreck, which was floating on the waves, the form and peculiar limping
gait of a drowned comrade.2 The case of the proverbial crowd and
the stone lion's tail is somewhat different ; for there the object was
clearly seen, and recognised for what it was. But we are all of us
well exercised in imagining familiar objects as moving in position
and changing in contour ; and the power of evoking mental pictures
is often, I think, strong enough to enable us slightly to modify our
visual impressions ; while such devices as half-closing our eyes, or
shutting them alternately in quick succession, or moving or inclining

1 An interesting case was given by Mr. W. H. Pollock, in the Christmas number,
for 1884, of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, under the title "The Ghost at the
Lyceum." Mr. Pollock has assured me that the description is "an absolute record of fact,
without a word of garnish " ; and his recollection of the incident, and of the bewilderment
that it caused, was quite confirmed by his companion's account, as reported to me indepen-
dently by a common friend. Seated in a box at the theatre, Mr. Pollock and a friend saw,
during several hours (with intermissions when the lights were turned up), the vivid
appearance of a decapitated head, with a fine profile and a grey Vandyke beard, resting on
the lap of a lady in the stalls. At the time, they rejected the idea that this could have been
an optical effect due to the folds of the lady's garments — as they noticed that she moved
more than once in the course of the evening, while the face remained the same. Mr. Pollock
seems to have been unaware that, as a possible example of collective hallucination, the vision
had a very high scientific interest ; or he would scarcely, even for " sporting and dramatic"
purposes, have taken refuge in so meaningless a designation as " ghost." It may be, how-
ever, that the case was after all one not of hallucination, but only of illusion. It is at
any rate impossible, from the record, to be quite sure that adequate means were taken to
exclude this hypothesis, which, as Mr. Pollock has recently informed me, is the one that
he is now inclined to adopt.

- Dr. Hack Tuke, Influence of the Mind upon the Body. 2nd Edition, p. 59 ; Wundt,
Op. cit., Vol. ii., p. 358.

186 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

the head, will increase the illusion. It is not surprising, then, that a
strong effort to see a thing in a way in which others are professing to
see it, should, for a brief period, introduce illusory elements into what
seems to be a clear and complete view of the object.

These considerations will certainly suffice to explain the majority
of the collective apparitions on record. The visions seen during
battles, such as are especially frequent in the history of the Crusades
— either signs in the heavens or phantom champions — may easily
have had some objective basis. The streak of cloud, which at one
moment may be " very like a whale," might at another be equally,
like a fiery sword ; real horsemen might be unrecognised, and the first
breath of rumour that they were supernatural assistants would be
caught up with avidity.1 More deceptive cases however occur,
which are not illusions, but yet have as little claim as the preceding
to be called collective hallucinations, if that word be (as throughout
this treatise it is) confined to the strict sensory meaning. Nothing,
for instance, could better illustrate what collective hallucinations
are not, than two cases which Dr. Brierre de Boismont2 has adduced
to illustrate what they are. A battalion of infantry, after a 40
miles' march under a June sun, was quartered for the night in a
dismal building which had the reputation of being haunted. The
surgeon of the regiment describes how, about midnight, these soldiers
rushed out of their quarters with wild cries, and declared that the
devil had entered their chamber " in the form of a large black dog
with curly hair, who had bounded upon them, ran over their chests
with the rapidity of lightning, and disappeared on the side opposite
to the one at which he had entered." Now — on the supposition

1 The reader will recall the phantom battle in the sky, described by Motley (The
Rise of the Dutch Republic, pp. 559-60), as to which the depositions of five witnesses were
taken on oath. The collective vision of an army marching on terra firma, described
by the Duke of Argyll in Good Woi'ds for January. 1875, would be less easy to account
for as an illusion : but the record is second-hand, and was not written down till more than
50 years after the incident is alleged to have occurred. Phantom champions are not yet
extinct. Mr. J. T. Milward Pierce, of Bow Ranche, Nebraska, U.S.A., has told me
of a quite recent case, narrated to him by one of the witnesses — where the form of a
defunct Indian Chief, " Brown Bear," led his tribe in a battle against theDacotahs. Mr.
Pierce has since sent me a first-hand account of the incident from another professed
witness.

A recent case of a more ordinary type is the following, from Mrs. Lane, of 49, Redcliffe
Square, S.W. When at school, she was sleeping in the bed of a Miss Winch, who had been
sent home ill ; and waking up, she was much alarmed to see this girl standing at the foot of
the bed. She addressed the figure, which nodded slowly. She then roused her companions,
"and they all said they saw Miss Winch, too." The girls did not know, what was learnt
next day, that Miss Winch was dying ; but even supposing the first percipient's vision to
have been telepathic, her terrified words, and the dim light, would probably be quite
sufficient to convert a bed-hanging or a curtain into the suggested form for her com-
panions' eyes.

2 Des Hallucinations (Paris, 1862), pp. 280, 396.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 187

that no real dog or cat had a share in shaping the idea — what can be
more likely than that the general nervousness took sudden form from
one man's sudden cry, on waking from a nightmare ? There is
not the slightest proof that all present simultaneously saw the dog,
and followed his movements. I have already drawn attention
to the ease with which uneducated persons may slip into believing
that they have seen what they have only heard of; and under
excitement this is, of course, doubly easy. One man may have
believed that he saw ; the rest may merely have believed they had
seen. De Boismont's second case is that of Dr. Pordage's disciples in
the middle of the seventeenth century, who saw " the powers of hell
pass in review before them, seated in chariots, surrounded by dark
clouds, and drawn by lions, bears, dragons, and tigers. These were
followed by inferior spirits, who were provided with the ears of a cat
or a griffin, and with deformed and distorted limbs." But here the
fact that " it made no difference whether their eyes were open or
shut " renders it doubtful how far the impression was really more
than a vivid inward picture ; and there is nothing to contradict, and
everything to suggest, the notion that one person described his
impressions in language which would easily conjure up the general
scene in kindred and excited minds.

But apart from such spurious types, cases undoubtedly remain
of really externalised collective hallucination, which are still perfectly
explicable without resorting to thought-transference. The history
of religious epidemics supplies instances where a whole group of
persons have professed to behold some exciting or adorable object, and
probably actually projected its image into space as part of the
surrounding world ; but where, without proof (which has never been
presented) that what was seen was independently observed and
described, it would be rash to suppose any other cause for the
similarity of the individual experiences than a previous common
idea and common expectancy.1 Nor is even expectancy a necessary
condition ; there are cases where the suggestion of the moment seems
sufficient. The most marked of these are hypnotic hallucinations :
it is as easy for a mesmerist to persuade a group of good " subjects "
that they all see a particular phantasmal object, as to persuade one of
them that he sees it. And I think it must be admitted as possible

1 A probable example is the recent remarkable delusion at Cprano — starting from a
peasant girl's alleged vision of the Virgin — in which a crowd of children and many adults
shared. It is described in the Times for July 31, 1885.

188 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

that mere verbal suggestion may act similarly on certain minds at
certain times, without the preliminary of any definite hypnotic pro-
cess. I say at certain times advisedly ; for all clear evidence of the
sort seems to connect the phenomenon with circumstances of rather
special absorption or excitement, sometimes even with a state of
semi-trance.1 I do not know of any instance where the sane and
healthy A, simply by saying at a casual moment to the sane and
healthy B, " There is such and such an object " (not really present,
and not capable of being imposed as an illusion on some object really
present), has at once caused the object to be conjured up in space
before B's eyes. In the most extreme case that has come to my
knowledge, where something like this has proved possible, very
strong insistance and repetition on A's part, of the sort that a
mesmerist employs when seeking to dominate a " subject's "
mind, are needed before the impression develops into sensory
form. In cases, therefore, where A has himself had a hallucina-
tion of which he has spoken at the moment, and B has shared
it, it is too much to assume at once that B's experience must have
been exclusively due to the verbal suggestion ; for if A's mere
suggestion can produce such an effect on B at that particular moment,
why not at other moments when he suggests the imaginary object
without having himself seen it ? None the less, of course, ought the
hypothesis of verbal suggestion to be most carefully considered, in
relation to the special circumstances of each case, before any other
hypothesis is even provisionally admitted.

I have, perhaps, said enough to define the phenomena which are
really of interest for us here. Fairly to allow of explanation by

1 If (as intelligent English eye-witnesses believe,) a semi-hypnotic condition, due to
abnormally concentrated attention, is in great part answerable for the extraordinary
illusions of Indian jugglery, the same condition might naturally be looked for in cases of
collective hallucination. Very suggestive in this respect is the following record, by
Professor Sidgwick, of a scene described to him by Mazzini : —

" In or near some Italian town, Mazzini saw a group of people standing, apparently
gazing upwards into the sky. Going up to it, he asked one of the gazers what he was
looking at. ' The cross — do you not see? ' was the answer ; and the man pointed to the
place where the cross was supposed to be. Mazzini, however, could discern no vestige of
anything cruciform in the sky ; and, much wondering, went up to another gazer, put a
similar question, and received a similar answer. It was evident that the whole crowd had
persuaded itself that it was contemplating a marvellous cross. ' So, ' said Mazzini, ' I was
turning away, when my eye caught the countenance of a gazer who looked somewhat
more intelligent than the rest, and also, I thought, had a faint air of perplexity and doubt
in his gaze. I went up to him, and asked what he was looking at. " The cross," he said,
"there." I took hold of his arm, gave him a slight shake, and' said, "There is not any
cross at all." A sort of change came over his countenance, as though he was waking
up from a kind of dream ; and he responded, " No, as you say, there is no cross at all.
So we two walked away, and left the crowd to their cross. ' It is nearly 20 years since I
heard this story ; but it made a considerable impression on me, both from the manner in
which Mazzini told it, and from its importance in relation to the evidence for ' spiritual-
istic ' phenomena."

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 189

thought-transference, a collective case must present evident marks
(1) of being a hallucination and not a mere illusion ; (2) of having
occurred, so to speak, in an isolated way, and not under the dominance
of any special prepossession ; and (3) of having been independently
projected by the several percipients, and not merely conjured up by
one on the suggestion of another. It is naturally not always easy
to ascertain how far these conditions are met. In judging of the
auditory cases, especially, great caution is necessary ; for, as we have
seen above (pp. 125-6), there is scarcely any sort of mere noise which
may not have some undiscoverable external origin in the house or the
neighbourhood. Intelligent speech, on the other hand, and certain
musical sounds, such as bell-sounds or distinct melodic sequences, if
externally caused, imply conditions the presence or absence of which
it is usually possible to ascertain. So again in the visual cases, the
fact of dim or uncertain light may favour the hypothesis of illusion ;
but where the light is good, the presence or absence of an adequate
external cause in the vicinity can often be determined with all but
complete certainty.1 One point of uncertainty often remains, owing

1 I am including only cases of hallucinations which have occurred to more than one
percipient simultaneously, or very nearly so. The extremely perplexing cases, few, but well
attested, where the same phantasm has been independently described by different
persons who have at different times encountered it in the same locality, may possibly
be also connected with the infectious character of hallucinations ; for we cannot pro-
nounce it to be indispensable that the infectious influence should act at the moment.
A certain amount of evidence for this explanation is afforded by cases where the ex-
perience (not apparently due to suggestion or illusion) has sometimes occurred to
one person alone, and at other times to several together. But the hypothesis,
as thus extended, becomes doubtful and difficult, and is, moreover, only one out
of several hypotheses, all about equally doubtful and difficult, that may be
suggested. (See Mrs. H. Sidgwick's paper " On the Evidence, collected by the Society,
for Phantasms of the Dead," in the Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. iii., especially pp. 146-8.)

Clearly no such explanation is needed for the general run of traditional appearances —
the white ladies, headless horses, and phantom dogs, which are the most widely-spread
forms ; or the phantasms which are more or less indigenous to a particular district, like the
" corpse-candles " of some Welsh counties, and the figures in shrouds of the Western
Scottish islands. To account for these, we need not go beyond the latent idea in the
percipient's own mind. But it seems occasionally to happen that the percipient of a
traditional phantasm is a person not previously acquainted with the tradition. Thus Mr.
Lowell tells me that he once saw the appearance of the "Witch-farm," on the Massa-
chusetts coast, though unaware of the local legend concerning it, at the very place to
which he found afterwards that the legend assigned it ; and in Dyer's English Folk-Lore,
p, 208, a case is reported where a phantasm, coinciding with and possibly originating in
a death, took a form that exactly accorded with the ideas of death-apparitions current
in the place, though the percipient was a transient sojourner whom no rumour of those
ideas had reached.

Another type (recorded by Aubrey, Martin, Dalyell, Napier, Gregor, and other
writers on "second-sight," and possibly genuine), which seems to strain the hypothesis of
infection somewhat less, is that where physical contact with the percipient of an abnormal '
sight or sound has enabled.a second person to share it. Our own collection contains a couple
of modern instances — one first-hand from Mrs. Taunton, of Brook Vale, Witton, near
Birmingham, the other from two daughters and ason-in-law of the late Mr.and Mrs.George
Whittaker,of the Bowdlands,Clitheroe,thefirst-hand witnesses. Such a phenomenon might
at least be compared with the favouring effect of contact in certain "thought-reading"
results, which (by rare exception among results where contact is a condition) seem not to
be explicable as "muscle-reading."

190 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

to the way in which the evidence reaches us : we cannot be sure how
far the mere verbal description of one percipient, after the occur-
rence, may not have caused another to fill in or modify his own
recollection with details which he did not himself observe. But if
both clearly shared in the experience, it is not important that their
percepts may not have been so precisely similar as is sometimes
alleged. So far, indeed, from telling against the theory of mental
transfer, such want of identity is rather what we might have expected,
both from the numerous approximate successes in experimental
thought-transference — e.g., in reproducing drawings — and from the
evidence that a telepathic impression is liable to be reacted on in
various ways by the person whom it affects.

§ 4. I fear to weary the reader by yet further explanations and
distinctions before examples are given. But difficulty of exposition
and risk of misapprehension alike culminate in this final chapter ;
and the patience which has been able to accompany me thus far must
be so considerable that I venture to make one more demand on it.

I have propounded the question, what evidence do we find that
purely subjective hallucinations of the senses may be infectious ? and
I have implied that I am able to produce some evidence of the sort.
And, in fact, I am about to cite examples which I think that
the majority of my readers — or of such of them at any rate as
accept the substantial accuracy of the facts — will regard as going some
way to establish the point. But there are those, I am aware, in whose
minds some of my instances will produce a doubt whether the
experiences were really subjective — whether they may not have had
some unknown origin external to any of the perceiving minds ; and I
admit, though the doubt weakens my argument, that it is one which
I in some measure share. To explain this, I must recur to a point
that was very briefly touched on in Chap. XI. (Vol I., p. 512, note).
It may be remembered that the question there arose whether post-
mortem appearances of persons some time deceased were necessarily
subjective hallucinations, or whether they might not be amenable to a
telepathic explanation ; and I observed that, while telepathy — being
a psychical and not a physical conception — was quite able to
embrace these phenomena as possibly due to the action of human
minds continuing after bodily death, yet the evidence for them (of a
sort that would preclude their being regarded as purely subjective
experiences) was scanty and inconclusive ; and I dismissed the topic

xvin.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 191

as not germane to an inquiry concerning telepathic transferences
between the minds of living persons. But the topic which was
rightly thus dismissed when we were considering affections p-f a single
percipient, forces itself on us again when we encounter cases of
joint percipience. For suppose that the object which B and C both
simultaneously behold is the form of the deceased A. Then, if (1)
the idea of B's and C's affection by the still continuing mind of A be
rejected — as it would be by disbelievers in survival after physical
death — yet B's and C's simultaneous affection remains a fact which
demands recognition in this book ; because, if A does not affect them,
then one of them must affect the other, i.e., the case is one of
transference between the minds of living persons. And if (2) the
idea of A's continuing power to affect B or C be admitted as tenable,
but the joint affection of B and C by A be regarded as improbable,
(owing to the difficulties already pointed out of conceiving the projec-
tion, under a telepathic impulse, of exactly simultaneous and
corresponding hallucinations) yet again a fact remains which demands
recognition in this book ; because, if A affects B and not C, then C's
vision of A must be obtained from B, and the case is again one of
transference between the minds of living persons.

The reader will now, perhaps, divine why I hesitate to apply the
words " purely subjective " to some, at any rate, of the cases in the
group that awaits us. Though no absent living person was concerned
in them as agent, I think it would be rash and unscientific to prejudge
the question (deliberately left open in Chap. XI.) whether they had
an origin in psychical conditions which have survived the change of
death. I have shown that alike on either of the above hypotheses —
alike, whether the dead (1) have not, or (2) have, minds which can
influence the living — cases of collective percipience suggestive of
the dead fall within the legitimate scope of the present inquiry ; but
I am anxious to avoid any appearance of dogmatic decision between
(1) and (2). I am about equally dissatisfied with the arguments
adduced for the former, and with the evidence adduced for the latter.
But in my view the cases, whatever else they involve, at any rate
involve an element of quite mundane thought-transference between
the minds of the living persons concerned; and I must beg the reader
to bear in mind that it is simply as probable or possible cases of
thought-transference, and not as manifestations from the dead, that
those of them which may seem to have reference to the dead are here
adduced. If the senses of B and C are similarly and simultaneously

192 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

affected without the presence of any material cause, then alike whether
there is or is not a real immaterial cause outside their two selves, I
believe that the joint phenomenon still depends (partly, if there is
such a cause, wholly, if there is not) on psychical communication
between their two minds. As to the point that is left in abeyance —
the existence or non-existence of the said cause — all varieties of
opinion will be allowed for by defining the group, not positively, as
cases of " purely subjective " origin, but negatively, as cases which do
not apparently originate in the condition of any absent living person.

§ 5. I will begin with visual examples. The following is a
collective hallucination of what I have called a rudimentary type, as
not suggesting any special form or human presence ; but it is a
remarkably prolonged and elaborate specimen of the sort.1 The
narrator is Mrs. Ward, of Glen Aray Lodge, Windsor.

1 Another striking rudimentary hallucination, of the cloud type, in which two persons
(out of the four who were present) shared, is described in Notes and Queries for September
8th and 22nd, and November 10th, 1860, and for January 5th, 1861. The narrator is Mr.
E. L. Swift, who was Keeper of the Jewels in the Tower at the time when the event
occurred, in the Jewel House. An incorrect version was given, without authority, in
Gregory's Animal Magnetism.

In Vol. i., p. 483, 1 drew attention to a particular kind of impression, which, without
actually developing into a sensory form, yet strongly suggests a particular person's
presence. It is interesting to observe that such an impression — which seems a sort of
potential hallucination — may be collective. Mrs. Easton, of 14, The Crescent, Taunton,
writes, in January, 1884 : —

"1 have been, on one occasion, impressed with the certainty that a sort of — so to
speak — invisible presence was in the room, and my sister, who was in the same room, told
me some hours after, that she had the same impression at that particular moment, I not
having spoken of the matter to her. This took place about two or three days after the
death of a near relative."

In reply to inquiries, Mrs. Easton adds : —

" In answer to the first question as to whether we ever had such an impression at any
other time, for myself I can answer ' No, ' decidedly, and my sister cannot remember
anything of the kind.

" The second question was, did we connect the impression with our deceased relation
at the time? For myself, I can answer, 'Yes' ; my sister has described her thoughts at that
praticular moment in the enclosed letter.

" The third question, ' Was there a strong bond of affection ? ' Yes.
"Fourth question, 'Can we be sure that the impression in each mind exactly
corresponded in time ? ' I am quite certain that, whatever produced this unusual feeling,
we both experienced it at the same moment, although perhaps in a different way, being so
unlike in temperament ; I remember looking at my watch on awakening, to know the time.
"Fifth question, 'How long did the impression last?' For some seconds; the
impression on my mind was that some unusual presence, something not material, was near."
The enclosure, from Mrs. Welch, of 5, Colleton Crescent, Exeter, was as follows : —
" In August last, I was sleeping in the room with my sister. I think it was the third
night after our father's death, and he was lying in a room below. I was aroused out of
my sleep with a feeling as if some person had entered the room, and come as far as the
foot of the bed when I awoke.

" I am particularly nervous at all times, of course after the recent event more so than
usual ; yet when I awoke, I did not feel the slightest fear, and only wished I could see the
time, as I instantly thought I should hear of something having happened at that moment
— the more so as our step-mother, we knew, was in a very precarious state.

"My sister awoke at the same time, and on my telling her of my sensations she told
me she had felt the same, although she is not in the least of a nervous temperament."

In reply to a question whether such an impression was unique in her experience, Mrs.
Welch says : —

" I never experienced the same feelings before, that I can recollect."

xvin.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 193

(316) " In May, 1851, I and my husband, the late E. M. Ward, R.A.,
had a curious experience which we were at a loss to account for, though it
became a subject of frequent conversation, and every effort was made to
find for it a fitting and rational explanation.

" We were living at No. 33, Harewood Square. It was in the month
of May, and my husband and I had been to a quiet gathering of friends in
the neighbourhood ; we returned about 12 o'clock, letting ourselves in, for
the servants were in bed, and went straight to our bedroom. Having
passed such a quiet, unexciting evening, there was nothing much to talk
about, and my husband was quickly in bed and asleep. I very soon
followed him, and was just getting into bed, having put out my candle,
with my face towards the door, when, much to my surprise, I saw, as
though suspended a little distance from the top of the door, a strange,
flickering flame ; it was about six inches high, and four inches across the
widest part, pear-shaped, and of a blueish lilac tint. I was considerably
startled and must have been much agitated, for my husband (as he
informed me afterwards) was roused by the sound of my fast beating
heart. In reply to his inquiries, I drew his attention to the strange flame
which I still saw suspended from the door frame, and whilst we were
both wonderingly speculating as to what it could be, it was joined by
another flame, similar in every respect, but smaller. Greater still was our
surprise when we observed these two mysterious little lights slowly
advancing, side by side, towards us ; they came right on to our bed, and
then, determined to analyse their nature, we both sat up, and my husband
grasped them with his hands, rubbing them and endeavouring to rid us of
their society. But, to our astonishment, this treatment had no more effect
upon them than to break them into small luminous grains, which ran all
over the bed-covering like quicksilver. Gradually, however, this bright
inundation began to fade, and, as we still continued our efforts to
extinguish it, it disappeared.

" Such is the account of the occurrence. That it actually did occur to
us we never entertained the slightest doubt. I was certainly wide awake
at the time, and my mind was troubled in no way, and I was in good
health — otherwise there might be some ground for the belief that the ap-
pearance was the hallucination of a disordered mind, or of an over- wrought
brain. My husband, too, was undoubtedly wide awake, and retained a
perfect recollection of all the details of the vision the next day. We
discussed it, and tried to fathom its meaning, over and over again, but
could never arrive at any conclusion about it at all — except that as it did
not act as a forewarning to any coming event, did not correspond to any
important event, and did not appear to serve any purpose at all, its
appearance was utterly meaningless.

" HENRIETTA MARY ADA WARD."

In a later letter, Mrs. Ward adds : —

" As the lights were coming to the bed, there were two streaks of
moonlight on the counterpane, which could not come from any window, as
the room was darkened. They also when touched, with the two lamps,
merged into a mass of diamonds."

In conversation, Mrs. Ward told us that she had never experienced any
other hallucination of the senses

VOL. II. O

194 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

We have several other examples of collective hallucinations of
light. In one (described to us by Mrs. G. T. Haly, of 122, Coningham
Road, Shepherd's Bush, W., as having occurred a few days after her
husband's death, and assumed by her to be connected with him), a
flame as of a candle, but bluer, passed and repassed the bed on which
the two percipients were lying, at about 18 inches height from the
floor. In another, a luminous ball was seen in a corner of the room.
A fourth very remarkable instance, of the brilliant illumination and
then sudden darkening of an empty room, is described to us by the
Rev. Edward Ram, of Norwich, as a personal experience of himself and
his wife — but this was in a house where other unaccountable phen-
omena have been observed ; as was also the case in a fifth instance,
where a light is described by one percipient, Mrs. W. B. Richmond,
as a glow over the whole room, out of which (according to her
recollection) two bright little balls of light seemed to flash out ; and
by the other (her mother) as " flickering about " specially in a par-
ticular part of the room. In none of these cases does it seem possible
that the light was in any way cast or reflected into the room from
outside.1

Coming to instances of a more developed type, we have a con-
siderable group of cases as to which it might be a possible — though
I think a rather desperate — assumption that what was seen was a
real object, most strangely misinterpreted, or else appearing in most
improbable circumstances ; and which I do not therefore number as
evidential items. Specially baffling are some of the cases where a
carriage, as well as human beings, has appeared. For instance, Major
W., resident near Conon Bridge, Ross-shire, writes : —

" February 9th, 1882.

" It was the month of August ; rather a dark night and very still ;
the hour, midnight ; when before retiring for the night I went, as is often
my custom, to the front door to look at the weather. When standing for a
moment on the step, I saw, coming round a turn in the drive, a large close
carriage and pair of horses, with two men on the box. It passed the front
of the house, and was going at a rapid rate towards a path which leads to
a stream, running, at that point, between rather steep banks. There
is no carriage-road on that side of the house, and I shouted to the
driver to stop, as, if he went on, he must undoubtedly come to grief.

1 In the last case, the second percipient suggests the lantern of thieves trying to rob
the pigeon-house. But in the first place, the pigeon-house was not robbed, and no vestige
of thieves was found ; and in the second place, the light would have had to penetrate a
very dark green blind, and thieves are not wont to require for their work an advertisement
of such preternatural brilliancy.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 195

The carriage stopped abruptly when it came to the running water,
turned, and, in doing so, drove over the lawn. I got up to it ; and by this
time my son had joined me with a lantern. Neither of the men on the box
had spoken, and there was no sound from the inside of the carriage.
My son looked in, and all he could discern was a stiff-looking figure sitting
up in a corner, and draped, apparently, from head to foot in white.
The absolute silence of the men outside was mysterious, and the white figure
inside, apparently of a female, not being alarmed or showing any signs
of life, was strange. Men, carriage, and horses were unknown to me,
although I know the country so well. The carriage continued its way
across the lawn, turning up a road which led past the stables, and so
into the drive again and away. We could see no traces of it the next
morning — no marks of wheels or horse's feet on the soft grass or gravel
road ; and we never again heard of the carriage or its occupant, though I
caused careful inquiries to be made the following day. I may mention
that my wife and daughter also saw the carriage, being attracted to the
window by my shout. This happened on the 23rd of August, 1878."

After a visit to the house in September, 1884, Mr. Podmore wrote : —
"Major W., on whom I called to-day, is practically satisfied that what
he and his family saw was not a real carriage. He showed me the whole
scene of its appearance. The spot where the carriage appeared to turn
barely leaves sufficient room for the passage of an ordinary carriage, and
that a carriage should turn round there seems almost impossible. The
carriage went for some distance across the lawn — a mossy and rather damp
piece of grass — and stopped in front of the house for more than a minute,
the while Major W. spoke to the man, but without receiving any reply.
His wife, whom I also saw, was attracted to the window by the sound of
the wheels, in the first instance, on the gravel. Major W. made many
inquiries among his neighbours, but could not find that anyone had seen
the carriage at all. The house is situated on a peninsula stretching between
the Cromarty and Moray Firths, and some 3 miles from the neck of the
peninsula. The locality is very lonely, there being no villages or hamlets,
and but few private residences of any kind ; and it is difficult to imagine
the errand which could bring a strange carriage into such a country at the
dead of night. Major W. has had one other purely subjective hallucina-
tion."

In another of the carriage-cases, the hallucination was of a more
bizarre sort, the coachman and footman on the box having black faces,
and the four ladies inside being dressed completely in black. The
vehicle passed the window without producing any sound on the
gravel. In a third case (quoted above, pp. 97-9), one of the percipients
was altogether apart from the three others — they seeing the
phantasmal carriage pass the window, and she meeting it some way
down the road. In a fourth case, our informant — Mr. Paul Bird, of
39, Strand, Calcutta — followed a phantom gharrie for 100 yards,
into the very portico of Hastings House at Alipore, while the same
vehicle was watched in its approach by his wife from a window. But

VOL. II. O "2

196 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

more of a puzzle even than the carriage-cases is a narrative received
from two daughters of a well-known clergyman — neither romantic nor
superstitious witnesses — who describe a vast swarm of soundless
phantasmal shapes, dressed in old-fashioned garments, most of them
dwarfish, and two with sparks round their faces, by which they and a
maid were once accompanied for about 200 yards in a lane near Oxford.
" One might imagine it to be a kind of mirage ; only the whole
appearance [owing to the dresses] was so unlike what one would have
seen in any town at the time we saw it."1 If this must be regarded
as illusion, because it occurred in misty moonlight, yet an identity
of impression is described which still suggests mental infection : —
" If one saw a man, all saw a man ; if one saw a woman, all saw a
woman ; and so on."

I pass by, however, as necessarily inconclusive, the greater
number of our instances of collective impression where the appearance
was seen out of doors in imperfect light — though there is not one
of them which would not be decidedly more remarkable, as a
specimen of joint illusion, than any that I have found recorded in
print.2 The following daylight example is from the Misses Mont-
gomery, of Beaulieu, Drogheda.

"March 2nd, 1884.

(317) "About the year 1875, 1 and my sister (we were about 13 years
old then) were driving home in the tax-cart one summer afternoon about 4

1 This case, which in brief abstract may sound like a frightened girl's story, will
not, I think, produce that impression in the complete account, which may be found in
the Proceedings of the S.P.R., vol. iii., p. 77.

2 The following case, remote but first-hand, is made interesting by the fact that one
of the persons present did not share the experience. Mrs. Stone, of Walditch, Bridport,
tells us that one beautiful summer evening, after sunset but while it was still quite light,
she was driving home with a cousin and a friend — " three more merry girls could hardly
be met with " — and a man-servant.

" I saw the figure of a man on the right-hand side, walking, or rather, gliding, at the
head of the horse. My first idea was that he meant to stop us, but he made no effort of
the kind, but kept on at the same pace as the horse, neither faster nor slower. At first I
thought him of great height, but afterwards remarked that he was gliding some distance
(at least a foot) above the ground. Mary was sitting by me. I pointed out in a low
voice the figure, but she did not see it, and could not at any time during its appearance.
Emily was sitting by the man-servant on the front seat ; she heard what I said, turned
round, and speaking softly, 'I see the man you mention distinctly.' Then the man-
servant said, in an awful, frightened voice, ' For God's sake, ladies, don't say anything !
please keep quiet ! ' or words to that effect. I had heard that horses and other animals
feel the presence of the supernatural ; in this instance there was no starting or bolting,
the creature went on at an even pace, almost giving the idea of being controlled by the
figure . The face was turned away, but the shape of a man in dark clothing was clearly
defined . My cousin and the man-servant saw it distinctly, but my friend was unable to
do so, though the figure stood out plainly against the evening light ; she was so placed
that she ought to have seen it particularly well. At the entrance of the village of
Charminster it vanished, and we saw it no more. I never heard the road was haunted ."

This may perhaps have been an optical effect due to the horse's breath ; but many
breathing horses are out on summer evenings, and I should be glad to know of a similar
effect in other instances. It is at any rate odd that it should have been interpreted
in the same way by several observers.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES, 197

o'clock, when there suddenly appeared, floating over the hedge, a female
figure moving noiselessly across the road ; the figure was in white, and
the body in a slanting position, some 1 0 feet above the ground. The
horse suddenly stopped and shook with fright, so much so that we could
not get it on. I called out to my sister : * Did you see that ? ' and she
said she had, and so did the boy Caffrey, who was in the cart. The figure
went over the hedge, on the other side of the road, and passed over a field,
till we lost sight of it in a plantation beyond. Altogether, 1 suppose, we
watched it for a couple of minutes. It never touched the ground at all,
but floated calmly along. On reaching home we told our mother of what
we had seen, and we were perfectly certain it was not a mere delusion or
illusion, nor an owl, or anything of the kind.

" I have never seen anything like this nor any apparition before or
since. We were all in good health at the time, and no one had suggested
any grounds for the apparition beforehand ; but we afterwards heard that
the road was supposed to be haunted, and a figure had been seen by some
of the country folks.

" VIOLET MONTGOMERY.

" SIDNEY MONTGOMERY."

Professor Barrett, who knows the witnesses, adds that Mrs. Mont-
gomery remembers the incident well, and the terror her children were in
They both agreed as to the reality of the figure. Caffrey has gone to
America, and been lost sight of.

No one probably will suppose that the witnesses here have
agreed to repeat, for our benefit, a romance which they fabricated for
their mother's at the time ; and however much allowance be made
for childish terror or exaggeration, the community of experience in
broad daylight seems to exceed what can be attributed to verbal
suggestions, passed from one to another, d propos of a fleece of cloud
or an owl. We have a very similar instance from Mr. W. S. Soutar,
solicitor, of Blairgowrie, N.B. — who records that he and his brother,
as young boys, at play behind their father's house, in the gloaming ot
a summer evening, " both saw an apparition in the shape of a female
figure, plainly dressed, with a striped apron over the face, and which
glided, without any apparent movement of the feet, from the road
till about half-way between it and the hedge surrounding a shrubbery
near the house, when the figure suddenly disappeared. There was no
cover near, behind which the person (if in the body) could hide, the
spot where it disappeared being bare and open." This case, however,
is remote, and the second witness is dead. A much more striking
example (brought to our notice by Mr. A. Farquharson, of North
Bradley, Trowbridge, Wilts) is one where the senses of two adults —
a gentleman-farmer, described as a hard-headed unromantic business-
man and his wife — were similarly deluded in an exposed space and in

198 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

broad daylight ; but the timidity of the witnesses precludes me from
giving details.

To come, however, to indoor cases, of a less dubious type. As a
rule, the figure seen (just as in purely subjective cases occurring to a
single percipient) is unrecognised. The following account, though
remote, is first-hand, and at any rate deserves quotation. It occurs
in Letters of Philip, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield (1829), p. 11. The
incident was recorded by Lord Chesterfield in an MS. volume con-
taining his letters and "notes for my remembrance of things and
accidents, as they yearly happen to me."

(318) "A very odd accident this year [1652] befell mee, for being
come about a law sute to London . . I, waking in the morning about
8 o'clock, . . . plainly saw, within a yard of my bedside, a thing all
white like a stand8 sheet, with a knot atop of it, about 4 or 5 foot high,
wh I considered a good while, and did rayse myself up in my bed to
view the better. At last I thrust out both my hands to catch hold of it,
but, in a moment, like a shadow, it slid to the feet of the bed, out of

wh I, leapg after it, cd see it no more Doubting least

something might have happened to my wife, I rid home that day to Pet-
worth in Sussex, where I had left her with her father, the Earl of North-
umberland, and as I was going upstairs to* her chamber, I met one of my
footmen, who told me that he was comming to me with a packet of letters,
the wh I having taken from him went to my wife, who I found in good
health, being . . . with Lady Essex, her sister, and another gentle-
woman, one Mrs. Ramsey . . . They all asked me what made me to
come home so much sooner than I intended. Whereupon I told them
what had happened to me that morn8; which they all wondering at
desired me to open and read the letter that I had taken from the foot-
man, which I immediately did, and read my wife's letter to mee aloud,
wherein she desired my speedy return8 as fear8 that some ill wd happen
to mee, because that morning shee had seen a thing all in white, with a
black face, standing by her bedside. . . . By examining all particulars
we found that the same day, the same hour, and (as near as can be com-
puted) the same minute, all that had happened to me had befallen her,
being fortie miles asunder. The Lady Essex and Mrs. Ramsey were
witnesses to both our relations." 1

1 In another case where a phantasm, again of a very unusual aspect, was simultaneously
perceived by two persons at a distance from one another, we have the special reason for
supposing it to have been purely subjective in origin, that both percipients were some-
what liable to subjective visual hallucinations ; but though it comes to us on good authority,
it is third-hand, and cannot receive an evidential number. Dr. T. King Chambers,
F.R.C.P., of Shrubs Hill House, Sunningdale, writes : —

" December 26th, 1885.

" My uncle by marriage. Colonel Macdonald, was subject to frequent hallucinations,
when sitting up late reading, and working at some improvements in fortification and
Semaphore telegraphy, which he thought would be of value. The hallucinations were
wholly visual, I understood, not aural ; though he used to be heard hailing them, and
what he called ' conversing ' ; yet the conversation was in his usual style of pure mono-
logue. He was always quite sane — as have been all his children and grandchildren. His
son, Charles, was a civilian in the E.I.C. Service, and, whilst a student at Haileybury

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 199

Here, it will be seen, the two percipients were widely separated,
which excludes the idea of joint illusion or of verbal suggestion ;
and the case forms a parallel, among sensory phantasms, to that
given in Vol. I., p. 240, where the common experience was of an ideal
and emotional kind.

In the next example the percipients, though near together, were
not actually in one another's company. The case is of special interest,
inasmuch as the two percepts were slightly different, — the figure
being seen by one observer with a hat on, and by the other without,
and the difference corresponding with the associations natural to each
in their respective positions. A clergyman writing to us from
Lincoln, on April 29th, 1885, describes an afternoon call of the
preceding January.

(319) "I was ushered into the drawing-room, and was asked to take
a low arm-chair in the middle of the room ; but I preferred sitting on a
couch drawn up at right angles to the side of the fireplace, where I could
command a view, through the window, of the garden. Facing me, with
her back to this window, sat one lady ; to my left, seated not far from the
arm-chair mentioned, was another lady, fronting the hearth. While we
sat chatting upon the subject of my visit, an old man, of somewhat sad
appearance, dressed in a dark blue over-coat — somewhat shabby — and
with a flat-topped felt hat, and remarkable for a white beard, passed the
window ; and immediately after the front door bell rang. The lady of the
house was expecting a visit from some lady friend, and remarked ' This

must be .' I said, ' No, it's an old man with a white beard.' At

which both ladies present expressed surprise, and began wondering who it
could be. Just then the door of the room opened, and in walked a well-
known local practitioner. As soon as he had shaken hands all round, the
lady of the house said, ' But where is the old man with the white beard ? '
To which the doctor replied, ' Yes ; where is he ? '

" Our friend, the doctor, had happened to be passing the gate a short
time before, and had, without premeditation as he says, suddenly turned
in, struck with the idea of paying an afternoon call. He came up the walk
towards the hall door, and, in passing the window mentioned, looked into the

College,, was a constant visitor at our house in Keppel Street, and also in Essex . He was
the only one of the family who inherited his father's peculiarity, which they both
considered to be an hereditary racial disease, or rather mental malformation, of no
practical importance for good or harm, when once so understood by the afflicted person .

" Shortly before my cousin went to India [where he was killed in a mutiny] when I
was quite a child, he slept a night at my father's in Keppel Street ; and while going to
bed he saw a man with a face he did not recognise, dressed in an old-fashioned Spanish
costume. He was not alarmed, or particularly interested ; but as a matter of chit-chat,
mentioned it in a letter to his father at Exeter, who answered by return of post that, at
the same time, he had seen an exactly similar figure, in the same strange dress. I was too
young at the time to be safely told ghost-stories ; but my father and mother often detailed
the circumstances as a singular instance of coincidence. I should explain it by the fact
that both my uncle and cousin were at home in Devon, and fond of history. Both would
be likely to have a store of half remembered dates relating to the defeat of the Armada
and Spanish affairs, and the day may have suggested the forgotten date, and clothed it in
appropriate costume. " T. K. CHAMBERS."

200 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

room where we were sitting, and saw, seated in the low arm-chair, an old man
exactly answering to the description of the old man I had seen passing
the window (doubtless when the doctor passed), with this exception, that
the person he saw had, of course, no hat on. The doctor was surprised not
to find the old gentleman in the room ; hence his strange reply to the lady's
question.

" Now observe : / saw the old man exactly at the time the doctor was
passing the window. I did not see the doctor, whom I know well, who is
much shorter than the figure I saw, and who wore a brown top-coat, a silk
hat, and no beard. And the doctor saw the figure in the room, sitting
down and without a hat.

" I am not, as far as I know, subject to similar hallucinations, if the
affair may be rightly so-called."

Dr. Cant writes to us as follows : —

" Silver Street, Lincoln.

" May 7th, 1885.

" I have seen Mr. [the clergyman], and quite agree with all he

said. The old man was sitting down in the room, and I felt certain of his
presence, and was greatly astonished not to find him in the room. The
reports we have given are absolutely true, without any doubts in either of
our minds. « ^ f CANT>"

Dr. Cant was asked whether he had ever had any other hallucinations ;
and also whether he would have been certain to see any real person
occupying the position where the clergyman saw the figure. He replied : —

" In answer to your questions these phenomena are quite new to me, and
I never remember having one of the sort before. It was quite impossible

for the figure that Mr. saw to have been there, as I must have seen

it when passing, and he only saw one figure, and did not see me at all."

The next two cases resemble the last, in the point that the
two percipients do not seem to have seen exactly the same thing.
Surgeon-Major Samuel Smith, of Wyndham House, Kingsdown
Parade, Bristol, sent the following account to the Western Daily
Press (Nov. 30, 1881), and has since confirmed it to us.

(320) " I solemnly vouch for the truth of the statement made. I will
add that I have been, although not a professed teetotaller, a total abstainer
from stimulants for the past 10 years, and that I am not a believer in
Spiritualism as it exists in the present day.

" About 20 minutes past 1 1 o'clock on the night of the 20th of April
last, I was engaged with my wife's mother in playing a selection from
' La Figlia del Reggimento ' for the flute and piano. We were seated
in the drawing-room, which was brilliantly lighted by three large gas-
lights burning in globes which hung from the centre of the ceiling, the
only other occupants of the room being my wife, who had fallen asleep
upon the couch, and the baby asleep in the eradle. My wife's brother,
who had been with us, left the room at 1 1 o'clock, and retired to rest.
The room itself is spacious, lofty, and parallelogram-shaped, the piano
occupying a position immediately opposite to the only door of entrance in

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 201

the middle of the corresponding long side, so that in playing we sat with
our backs to the door, which was closed.

" I was thoroughly intent upon the music, which was new to me, and
difficult to read, so far as the flute was concerned, owing to the small size of
the notes ; when suddenly, in the midst of the performance, a strange feeling
of mingled awe and fear came over me, and I distinctly felt the approach
of someone, or rather of something, coming behind me, and this although
I was so engrossed with playing ; and in my mind I seemed to perceive
the shape. As it approached nearer, I turned my head to the right, and
distinctly perceived a shade of a greyish colour standing by me upon my
right hand, a little in advance of me. I did not see the whole figure, but
what I saw was part of a shadowy face, the outline of the forehead, nose,
mouth, chin, and a part of the neck being visible. Strange to say, I
do not remember seeing the eye, but the figure appeared to have a top hat
upon its head. As I gazed upon it, it vanished, and with it the feelings,
to a great extent, to which it gave rise. Of the mingled feelings which its
presence raised in my mind, I should say that awe predominated.

" I did not cease playing, and subsequently played other pieces by the
old masters, sang some songs, and finally went to bed, and slept well. Nor
did I mention the matter to my wife's mother that night, either at the
time of the occurrence, or before retiring to rest. Now, however, comes
the most remarkable part of the matter. At or about 11.30 a. m. on the
following day, my wife's mother came into the private room, and suddenly
said, ' Did you see something when you turned your head last night, when
you were playing ? ' I did not immediately reply, but the strange event of
the preceding night flashed across my mind instantly. I was, indeed, too
greatly surprised to reply at once, for I did not believe at the time that
she had noticed the action upon my part ; and, as I have already said, I
had not mentioned the matter to her, or even hinted at it.

" ' Why do you ask ? ' I replied.

" ' Because I thought you did.'

" 'Did you see anything?' I asked.

" ' Yes, I believed that someone had come into the room, as I felt that
someone had come in.'

" ' Did you think it was a man or a woman ? '

" ' I felt that it was a man, and at first believed it to be James' (my
wife's brother), ' who had come down, and I wondered how he could come
in without my hearing him.'

" ' Did you see anything 1 ' I asked.

" ' .Yes, I saw the back and shoulders of the form of a man ; it passed
across like a shadow behind you, stood to your right hand, and then
disappeared. I was not alarmed, but surprised.

" So ends the narrative. In no way can I explain the cause, or
sequence of events. As they occurred, so I present them."

Surgeon-Major Smith (January 15th, 1886), in sending his mother-in-
law's confirmation, adds : —

" In speaking of the matter to-day she said she felt the presence of the
visitor in her mind before she saw it ; and this is my experience of it. I
felt its presence before I saw it."1

1 See Vol. i., p. 483, and Chap, xii., § 2.

202 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

\.. " Wyndham House, Kingsdown, Bristol,

"January 15th, 1886.

" Agreeably to the request of Mr. Gurney, I write, but have nothing
to add to the statement of my experience of the strange visitation
described in the Western Daily Press in November, 1881 ; the facts being
as therein stated. " HANNAH ROBINSON."

Mr. Smith has repeated the account to me on the spot ; and it then
became evident that Mrs. Robinson, turning her head the instant after he
did the same, would have seen any flesh-and-blood figure rather more full-
face than he did ; instead of which she saw the back. The extremely
distinct and startling character of the experience came out more impres-
sively in conversation than in the written account. Neither percipient
can recall having had anything like a hallucination on any other occasion.

The following account is from the Rev. D. W. G. Gwynne, M.D.,
Neuaddvach, Pontardulais, South Wales. He first describes how he

took up his abode at P House, near Taunton, in 1853, and

how both he and his wife were made uncomfortable by auditory
experiences to which they could find no clue. He proceeds : —

(321) "I now come to the mutual experience of something that is as fresh
in its impression as if it were the occurrence of yesterday. During the
night I became aware of a draped figure passing across the foot of the bed
towards the fire-place. I had the impression that the arm was raised,
pointing with the hand towards the mantel-piece, on which a night>light
was burning. Mrs. Gwynne at this moment seized my arm, and the light
was extinguished. Notwithstanding, I distinctly saw the figure returning
towards the door, and being under the impression that one of our servants
had found her way into our room, I leapt out of bed to intercept the
intruder, but found, and saw, nothing. I rushed to the door, and
endeavoured to follow the supposed intruder, and it was not until I found
the door locked, as usual, that I was painfully impressed. I need hardly
say that Mrs. Gwynne was in a very nervous state. She asked me what
I had seen, and I told her. She had seen the same figure, but her
impression was that the figure placed its hand over the night-light and
extinguished it.

"The night-light in question was relit and placed in a toilette basin,
and burned naturally. I tried to convince myself that it might have been
a gust of wind down the chimney that put the light out ; but that will not
account for the spectral appearance, which remains a mystery.

" D, W. G. GWYNNE."

Mrs. Gwynne writes, on April 15, 1884 : —

" In addition to my husband's statement, which I read, I can only say
that the account he has given you accords with my remembrance of the
' unearthly vision,' but I distinctly saw the hand of the phantom placed
over the night-light, which was at once extinguished. I tried to cling to
Dr. Gwynne, but he leapt out of bed with a view, as he afterwards said, of
intercepting some supposed intruder. The door was locked as usual, and
was so when he tried it. He lit a candle at once, and looked under the
bed, and into a closet, but saw nothing. The night-light was also relit,

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 203

which was placed on the wash-stand, and together with the candle,
remained burning all night. I must observe that I had never taken to use
night-lights before we lived there, and only did so when I had been so
often disturbed and alarmed by sighs and heavy breathing close to my side
of the bed. Dr. Gwynne, on the appearance of the phantom, in order to
calm my agitated state, tried to reason with me, and to persuade me that
it might have been the effects of the moonlight and clouds passing over the
openings of the shutter, and possibly that a gust of wind might have
extinguished the light, but I knew differently. When we had both been
awakened at the same moment apparently, and together saw that unpleasant
figure, tall and as it were draped like a nun, deliberately walk up to the
mantel-piece and put out the light with the right hand, there could be no
mistake about it ; and I distinctly heard the rustling sound of garments as
the figure turned and left through the door, after my husband's attempt to
stop it with his open arms. The moonlight was very clear and the white
dimity curtains only partly closed. « MARY GWYNNE "

[As telling against the purely subjective origin of this experience, I
ought to mention that there was distinct evidence of others' having
observed unaccountable phenomena in the house, though this was not
known by Dr. and Mrs. Gwynne till after their own observation. They
soon afterwards gave up the house.]

In the next case the difference is still more marked, the percept
being visual to one person and auditory to the other ; while at the
same time something of the same idea seems to have been suggested
to both. For the purpose in view, the case (in spite of certain dis-
crepancies in the two accounts) is, perhaps, stronger than it looks.
For the fact that the visual and the auditory experience were both
unshared, is a decided indication that they were neither of them due
to a real external cause ; and if they were hallucinations, then (since
no words passed till after both had been experienced) it seems at any
rate very possible that one of them produced the other by thought-
transference. Lady C. writes, on Oct. 13, 1884 : —

(322) "In October, 1879, I was staying at Bishopthorpe, near York,
with the Archbishop of York. I was sleeping with Miss Z. T., when I
suddenly saw a white figure fly through the room from the door to the
window. It was only a shadowy form, and passed in a moment. I felt
utterly terrified and called out at once, ' Did you see that V and at the
same moment Miss Z. T. exclaimed, ' Did you hear that 1 ' Then I said,
instantly, ' I saw an angel fly through the room,' and she said, ' I heard an
angel singing.'

" We were both very much frightened for a little while, but said "
nothing about it to any one. " K. C."

Miss T. writes : —

"December 19th, 1884.

" Late one night, about October 17th, 1879, Lady C. (then Lady K. L.)

204 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

and I were preparing to go to sleep, after talking some time, when I heard
something like very faint music, and seemed to feel what people call ' a
presence.' I put out my hand and touched Lady C., saying, ' Did you hear
that 1 ' She said, ' Oh, don't ! Just now I saw something going across
the room ! ' We were both a good deal frightened, and tried to go to sleep
as soon as we could. But I remember asking Lady C. exactly what she
had seen, and she said, ' A sort of white shadow, like a spirit.' The above
occurred at Bishopthorpe, York. " Z. J. T."

In the next two examples (in which the figure was unrecognised)
no difference seems to have been noted in the impressions of the two
percipients. Mr. Bettany, of 2, Eckington Villas, Ashbourne Grove,
Dulwich, S.E., writes : —

"November, 1884.

(323) " One night, early this year, I became conscious of a figure in
my bedroom. It was a crouching figure of a woman, enveloped in a black
cloak and hood. My impression was that the woman was old, but I did
not see a face. This figure slowly and stealthily advanced from the bed-
room door to a wardrobe on the same side of the room. It then suddenly
and entirely disappeared, and, from the sudden shock, I gave a sharp loud
cry. I never saw such an appearance before or since. I consider myself
unusually unlikely to see apparitions. This figure and circumstance were
like no dream, but were to me real and evident, and there appeared to be
no transition between waking and sleeping. I was convinced that what I
saw was a waking sight. I have no idea whom the figure represented. I
had then occupied this house nearly three years, and I know nothing of
former occupants.

" ~No light was carried nor was any light burning in the room. The
figure was visible and the wardrobe was visible ; but when the figure
disappeared darkness was complete.1 The door was found locked.

" G. T. BETTANY."
Mrs. Bettany (the narrator of cases 20 and 309) writes : —

" On the night referred to, I woke suddenly, I know not from what
cause. My husband was leaning on his elbow, looking intently at a strange
woman whom I saw crouching by the wardrobe. I believed it to be a real
person. It, however, suddenly disappeared. My husband then gave a cry
as he describes. He then told me what he had seen. I tried the door and
found it locked.

" The thought has occurred to me that I may have seen this by sympa-
thetic transference from my husband ; but, against this, I am much more
likely to see something of this kind than he.

" Without having mentioned this apparition to my servants, the nurse-
maid told me, next day, that Muriel (a child of three years) had woke
her in the night, saying, without any fear in her voice, ' Clara, Clara,
there is an old woman in the room.' The nurse herself saw nothing. I
may add that my cook has on several occasions asked me if I had entered

i See Vol. i., pp. 550-1.

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 205

her room during the night, on occasions when I had certainly not done so.
She appeared much mystified on learning this.

"JEANIE GWYNNE BETTANY."

The narrator of the next experience requests that her name may

not appear.

"February 17th, 1884.

(324) " Shortly after my marriage, about the year 1847, 1 went to stay
at my father's house. I had at that time two sisters at home, unmarried.
The elder of the two was nearly two years younger than myself, and would
therefore be about 22 years of age at the time I speak of. The other
sister was much younger than us both, and at this time was about 14 years
old. My two sisters slept together in a room adjoining mine.

" One morning, on my going down to breakfast, my elder sister said to
me, ' Sarah, such a strange thing happened in the night. I was sleeping
outside (the other side of the bed was against the wall), and I was awoke
by a feeling of oppression at my chest, as though there was a weight there,
and I could not breathe. On opening my eyes I was startled to see a veiled
figure bending over me. While I looked, I felt Anna's arm come round
me. After what seemed to me a few minutes the form disappeared.
Then Anna whispered, 'Oh Lizzie, I thought it was going to take you away.' "

" This was my sister's account. I took an opportunity, when my
younger sister and I were alone, to ask her what that was that she and
Lizzie had seen. She said she was awoke by a feeling of oppression, as
though she could not breathe, and on opening her eyes, in the dim light of
the room (the blind was down, but there was a gas lamp in front of the
house, which gave some light to the room), she saw a veiled figure bending
over Lizzie, and she put her arm round her, as she thought it had come to
take her away.

" My father and his family shortly after moved into another house, my
sisters still occupying a room together. They assured me that once in this
other house they were visited by the same appearance, but this time it was
over Anna. She only lived a short time after, dying at sixteen and a-half .

" On sending this account to my sister, in case I might, through lapse
of time, have altered the matter, she assures me that it is substantially
corerct, and adds that the form was grey, darker and thicker in the middle ;
she also adds that the feeling of horror was intense. " L. S. B."

[Unfortunately the sister's letter was destroyed.]

The following case is a very singular one. The phenomenon of
mutual hypnotisation (or rather of hypnotisation of one person through
the process of hypnotising another) is one of which we have other
examples. But I have met with no other instance of genuine transfer
of a hallucination between two hypnotised persons; and, if this,
instance is a genuine one, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that
it depended on the peculiar condition established — the two not being
" subjects" influenced in common by a third person, but the originator
of the hallucination, whichever of the two it was, having exerted an

206 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

active influence on the other, and presumably established the sort of
rapport which is so common a feature of hypnotism. It could of course
only be by the rarest accident that an operator who had established
such a rapport should then and there become the victim of a sensory
hallucination, which would thus have a chance of being transferred ;
and the accident in this case was the fact that the operator herself
fell into an abnormal condition. I do not number the narrative, as it
is impossible to be quite certain that some unconscious look or gesture
on the part of one percipient did not evoke the image in the other's
mind ; for though the hypnotic state in itself has no special tendency
to promote hallucinations, except such as are suggested and impressed
in the plainest manner, in the present instance there seems to have
been a certain amount of expectancy, which probably facilitated the
affection in both the persons concerned. The case was received from
Miss Becket, of Hotel Vendome, Boston, U.S.A., an Associate of the
S.P.R, who wrote on January 25, 1886.

Miss Becket begins by describing how on one occasion she attempted
to hypnotise a friend who was standing two or three yards from her. She
made slow downward passes till her friend " shivered with cold." She
then reversed the passes, but soon herself- became rigid, with outstretched
arms. " Both the lady and myself turned our heads, and seemed to
follow with our eyes the movements of some invisible body around the
room. We seemed to see the same horrible something in the same part of
the room, for our faces had an expression of unutterable horror. Some-
times we looked behind this one object, as at something following its
progress round the room, but our eyes instantly returned to the greater
attraction, and at last our faces seemed so frozen in an agony of fear that
the gentleman sprang towards his wife, and dragged her to a seat, and used
great physical force before he could rouse her from the terrible spell. I
seemed to be in part liberated with her, but it was a long time before we
were really free from the strange influence we had fallen under.

" When we could talk, we found that we had each seen the same vision,
in every detail alike. I have always had a strong faith in religion. My
friends were too philosophical to admit dogmas into their minds. But the
one horrible central figure in our visions, it seems, must have originated in
my brain, from its resemblance to my idea of a personal devil. At all
events, we both saw, suddenly take form out of empty spaee, the giant
figure of a man. His face expressed fiendish cruelty and wickedness, and
we felt ourselves in part in his power, and knew that he was exulting in
this power. He seemed to be followed by a great many pigmy figures,
that danced about the room and made ugly faces at us, but dared not do
more in the presence of this master spirit. It was when the supernatural
malignancy of this frightful creature had almost overpowered us with fear
and horror, that our faces expressed such torture as to cause the gentleman
to interfere, and try to rouse us from the spell.

" As I have said, it was entirely out of our plan that / should share in

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 207

the vision. I had counted on watching the effects of my passes on my
friend ; and the shock of this unwelcome surprise put an end to any
further experiments in future. « MARIA J. C. BECKET."

The following is an independent and very different description, from
Mrs. Frederic D. Williams, the lady who shared in the experience : —

" 35bls, Rue de Fleurus, Paris.

"March 24th, 1886.

She first narrates how Miss Becket and she used to try on each other,
standing some distance apart, the effect of " magnetic passes," and how
she herself used to feel a hot current of air, and Miss Becket a cool one ;l
and continues : — " I cannot remember who [i.e., which of us] acted as
magnetiser on the particular occasion to which Miss Becket alludes : the
chief feature of it I, however, do recollect. This was seeing a strange
something — an appearance of a shadowy, transparent film, or veil, or sheet
of thinnest vapour,2 float slowly upward between Miss Becket and myself,
but (as it appeared to me) nearer her. Any possible doubt, if not of the
object itself, at least of our perception of something unusual, should be
disproved by the fact of our exclaiming simultaneously, ' Did you see
that ! ' — or words to that effect. I hesitate to say anything of the truth
of which I am not absolutely sure ; but I have an impression amounting
to certainty that it was upon the reverse passes being made that the above
incident happened. [This detail agrees with Miss Becket's statement.]

" L. L. W."

On receiving this account, I told Mrs. Williams what Miss Becket's
version was, and also asked whether Mr. Williams remembered the incident.
She replied that Mr. Williams could corroborate her statement as being
the same that she made to him at the time, but does not remember having
been present, though he admits that he may have been. She remembers
that her experience differed from Miss Becket's in not being alarming, and
that Miss Becket described hers as " infernal." What she saw had the same
sort of shape as a veil falling around a human form, and changed like a
cloud while being watched. She concludes : — " I had forgotten that Miss
Becket became rigid, but now remember the circumstance, and this fact,
that I was very much alarmed, not at what I saw (although it is quite
true we opened our eyes very wide at that), but at the state into which
Miss Becket was thrown, and also at the possibility of having done her
some serious harm through my inexperience in such matters ; which would
seem to decide, at least in my own mind, a point on which Miss Becket
and I seem to be at variance, namely, that it was I who was ' magnetis-
ing,' and not she. I do not know, however, that this is of any importance."

[Memory is clearly more likely to have erred as to the resemblance
than as to the difference of the two visions. But even if we only had Mrs.
Williams's account, some germ of thought-transference would be strongly
suggested by the sudden and simultaneous occurrence of two such singular
experiences.]

1 From this it would appear that Miss Becket confounded her friend's temperature-
sensations with her own. It seems to be an accident whether such subjective impressions
take the form of heat or cold.

2 This rudimentary sort of appearance, as we have seen, is a well established form of
subjective hallucination (see, e.g., p. 73, note).

208 COLLECTIVE CASES. CHAP.

I now come to cases where the figure was recognised. The
following transitional instance, of semi-recognition, is from Captain
Cecil Norton, late of the 5th Lancers, who tells us that he has had
no other hallucination of the senses.

" 5, Queen's Gate, S.W.

" December 20th, 1885.

(325) " About Christmas time 1875 or 1876, being officer on duty, I was
seated at the mess table of the 5th Lancers, in the West Cavalry Barracks,
at Aldershot. There were 10 or 12 other officers present, and amongst
them Mr. John Atkinson (now of Erchfont Manor, near Devizes, Wilts),
the Surgeon-Major of the regiment, who sat on my right, but at the end
of the table furthest from me and next to Mr. Russell. [Captain Norton
was sitting at the end of the table and directly facing the window.] At
about 8,45 p.m. Atkinson suddenly glared at the window to his right,
thereby attracting the notice of Russell, who, seizing his arm, said, ' Good
gracious, Doctor, what's the matter with you ? ' This caused me to look in
the direction in which I saw Atkinson looking, viz., at the window
opposite, and I there saw (for the curtains were looped up, although the
room was lighted by a powerful central gas light in the roof and by
candles on the table) a young woman, in what appeared a soiled or
somewhat worn bridal dress, walk or glide slowly past the window from
east to west. She was about at the centre of the window when I observed
her, and outside the window. No person could have actually been in the
position where she appeared, as the window in question is about 30 feet
above the ground.

" The nearest buildings to the window referred to are the Infantry
Barracks opposite, about 300 yards distant. Behind where I sat is a con-
servatory, which was examined by me, as well as the front window,
immediately after the occurrence. There was no person in the conserva-
tory. [It was unused in the winter.] The nearest buildings to it are
the officers' stables, over which are the staff sergeants' quarters, about 50
yards distant.

" The occurrence made little if any impression upon me, though it
impressed others who were in the room. All present had been drinking
very little wine ; and the dinner had been very quiet.

" It has just occurred to me that I may be wrong as to the time of
year and that the occurrence may have taken place about 15th October or
about 15th March. « CECIL NORTON."

Mr. Atkinson writes : —

" Erchfont Manor, Devizes.

"August 31st, 1885.

" The appearance of a woman which I saw pass the mess-room window
at Aldershot seemed to be outside, and it passed from east to west. The
mess-room is on the first floor, so the woman would have been walking in
the air. There has been a very nice story made out of it — like most other
ghost-stories, founded on an optical illusion."

[Captain Norton's vivd voce account made it tolerably clear, in my
opinion, that the case was one of hallucination, not illusion. He

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 209

further mentions that both Mr. Atkinson and he were " satisfied that the
face and form of the woman seen were familiar," though they could not at the
moment identify the person. Captain Norton afterwards felt sure that
the likeness was to a photograph which he was in the habit of seeing in
the room of the veterinary surgeon of the regiment, representing the
surgeon's deceased wife in bridal dress. Oddly enough, this man was at
the time, unknown to his friends, actually dying or within a day or two of
death, in the same building. But Mr. Atkinson recalls nothing about the
photograph ; and the coincidence is not one to which we can attach weight.]

The next instance must be reckoned as " ambiguous " in origin ; as,
though the person whose form was seen was in an abnormal state, this
had been to some extent chronic, and no reason is known why he should
have exercised a telepathic agency on the day in question more than
on any other. The narrator desires that her name may not be printed.

" October 28th, 1885.

(326) " In the month of November, 1843, myself, my eldest sister, and
the man-servant were driving home from a small town to our parsonage in
the country. The time might be about half past 4 or 5 p.m. As we came
slowly up the hill by the churchyard wall, we saw a gentleman in walking-
costume going into the vestry door. We both exclaimed, ' That's papa,'
and the man George said at the same moment, 'Why there's the master.'
My father was then ill, and away from home many miles away. He died
the following January 23rd, 1844. He wore a particular long cloak which
I should have recognised anywhere, and which he had many years, and
wore as a loose wrap. [What is meant clearly is that the cloak in which
the figure appeared to be dressed exactly resembled that of the narrator's
father.] He looked exactly like himself, and was going in by the small
vestry door he used to enter the church by when going to take duty. I do
not think he looked at us, but seemed intent on entering the church, and
disappeared inside. We were all much frightened, and searched round
the house and church but could see no one, and no one had been seen
about. I recollect the occurrence as if it had been yesterday, and, as I write,
see all distinctly in my mind's eye.

" The man-servant is dead ; my sister begs to corroborate my account.

" S. R."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. R. says : —

" My sister has always, when I have talked of the vision, said she saw
it so likewise, and she reiterated that only last summer, but she is not
equal to write about it. I quite see the weak point, if the church was not
searched inside. I can't say it was, nor can I say it was not. Old George,
the man, was most fond of his master, and may have gone into the church ;
but I can't say. I only know we were all so terribly frightened. The
vision was sudden, so true to life, and even to the particular long cloak, .
all gathered in to a collar clasped at the throat. I ought to have said that
the figure seemed in the act of going in by the vestry door : we did not see
him enter, as we drove on in great fright to the house. My father was
then under medical treatment at Northampton."

Mrs. R. gives details, showing the absolute impossibility that her father

VOL. n. p

210 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

could really have " left Northampton, being a dying man, so to speak,
when admitted," and come to the spot where he was seen, unknown to all
his friends. " Then, again," she adds, " the church was always kept locked,
the keys at the parsonage, supposing for a moment' -that we saw a living
figure. I recollect that inquiry was made of the villagers as to any strange
gentleman having been seen about, and the answer was ' No.' "

Asked whether she or her sister have ever had a hallucination of the
senses on any other occasion, Mrs. R. says, " I can emphatically answer
'No,' for both of us." Her sister was about 19 at the time, and she
herself 11 — " a fresh young child with perfect nerves."

The following account is from Mrs. Moberley, of Tynwald, Hythe.

"May 9th, 1884.

(327) " The case of hallucination shared by myself and a friend was
rather odd. We were both convinced we saw one afternoon a friend pass
before the window in which we stood, and enter the garden. We both bowed
to him, and believed he returned the greeting. He was in sight for some short
time ; quite long enough to allow of a distinct recognition, and the road
along which he passed was near to the window at which we stood. A quiet
country road, we knew every passer-by by sight and name, and our friend
was a remarkable man in some ways, not one to be easily confounded with
other people — a short, brisk, alert, foreign-looking man, with jet black
hair and white whiskers, a decidedly un-English overcoat, and a salute
peculiar to himself, a wave of the hat and a low bow, with which he never
failed to greet us. We waited to hear him announced in vain. On her
way home my friend met his son, who was extremely perplexed at hearing
that his father had been to our house. He had been intending to come,
but finding that he should be engaged had sent his son instead. Of course
when we all met, the mystery was exhaustively discussed, and dismissed as
a mystery. " FEAS. MOBERLEY."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Moberley says that the date was 1863;
that she was 19, and in good health ; and that she has never had any
other hallucination. The lady who shared the experience with her declines
to answer any questions, saying that "it is a question of principle."
Mrs. Moberley adds, " She has not forgotten the circumstance : she would
have been only too glad to say so."

Bearing in mind the " arrival " cases of Chap. XIV., § 7, we
cannot here assume it as quite certain that the direction of the absent
person's thoughts had nothing to do with the appearance; but if to
this extent " ambiguous," the case seems at any rate one of collective
hallucination. The same remark applies to the next example — from
Mrs. Forsyth Hunter, of 2, Victoria Crescent, St. Heliers, Jersey.

" 1882.

(328) " Another odd appearance l was that of my elder daughter, a
bright lively girl of fifteen. I had placed her at a finishing school in

1 Some apparently veridical cases from the same informant will be found below —
Nos. 408, 553, 554, 650.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 211

Edinburgh, and returned to my cottage, in M. Next morning at break-
fast, I suddenly looked out of the window, and saw her quite distinctly
coming in at the garden gate, in pork-pie hat, grey dress looped up over a
red petticoat, just as she had been the day before. Not a word said I, but
M., my second daughter [since deceased], exclaimed joyously and wonder-
ingly, ' There is B ! ' For the few seconds the vision lasted, I saw her, as
if stooping to undo the latch of the gate. Afterwards she told me how
unhappy she had been for the first day in school, and what an intense
longing had seized her to return to us. No doubt both her sister and
myself were thinking of her, at the same time."

In answer to the question whether she can be quite certain that the
figure seen was not that of a stranger bearing some resemblance to her
daughter, Mrs. Hunter replies : —

" Your supposition amuses me. The figure melted away, in the act of
seemingly stooping to undo the latch of our little gate. It was a bright
autumn morning. We were seated at breakfast, the table close to a bow-
window, overlooking a strip of garden, belonging to a cottage at Melrose :
the gate being a low wooden gate, and no house near. It was my
daughter's face, figure, and dress, just as she had appeared the day
before, when I took her to school at Edinburgh. My daughter was
distinguished-looking, and no one in that neighbourhood could at all be
mistaken for her. Our sight was quite good, and neither short-sighted.
In short, there is no doubt that in some mysterious way her longing and
our thinking [of her] brought about this appearance. Another explana-
tion might be that our imaginations might at the same moment have called
up the figure."

[The facts that the phantasm presented exactly the aspect of the real
figure so recently seen, and that Mrs. Hunter's thoughts were much
occupied with her absent daughter, and further that she had previously
had a subjective " after-image " of this very daughter (Chap. XII., § 4),
decidedly favour the supposition that her experience on this occasion was
also of that character. And if so, the case seems clearly to be one where
a purely subjective hallucination has been transferred.]

In the next example, the apparition seems more definitely
independent of any conscious mental action on the part of the absent
person; for it would be hard to attribute a special telepathic influence
to some casual image of his usual resort that may have flitted across
his mind, at the same time that his form appeared. The two
percipients were at the time secretaries to societies of which the
offices were in the same building. The narrator is Mr. R. Mouat,
of 60, Huntingdon Street, Barnsbury, N. His account, which
was written down soon after the occurrence, has been slightly
condensed.

(329) "On Thursday, the 5th of September, 1867, about the hour of
10.45 a.m., on entering my office, I found my clerk in conversation with the
porter, and the Rev. Mr. H. standing at the clerk's back. I was just on
the point of asking Mr. H. what had brought him in so early (he worked

VOL. II. P 2

212 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

in the same room as myself, but was not in the habit of coming till about
mid-day) when my clerk began questioning me about a telegram which had
missed rne. The conversation lasted some minutes, and in the midst of it
the porter gave me a letter which explained by whom the telegram had
been sent. During this scene Mr. R., from an office upstairs, came in and
listened to what was going on. On opening the letter, I immediately
made known its purport, and looked Mr. H. full in the face as I spoke. I
was much struck by the melancholy look he had, and observed that he was
without his neck-tie. At this juncture Mr. R. and the porter left the room.
I spoke to Mr. H., saying, ' Well, what's the matter with you ? You look
so sour.' He made no answer, but continued looking fixedly at me. I took
up an enclosure which had accompanied the letter and read it through, still
seeing Mr. H. standing opposite to me at the corner of the table. As I
laid the papers down, my clerk said,' Here, sir, is a letter come from Mr. H.'
No sooner had he pronounced the name than Mr. H. disappeared in a
second. I was for a time quite dumbfounded, which astonished my clerk,
who (it now turned out) had not seen Mr. H., and absolutely denied that
he had been in the office that morning. The purport of the letter from
Mr. H., which my clerk gave me, and which had been written on the
previous day, was that, feeling unwell, he should not come to the office
that Thursday, but requested me to forward his letters to him at his house.
" The next day (Friday), about noon, Mr. H. entered the office ; and
when I asked him where he was on the Thursday about 10.45, he replied
that he had just finished breakfast, was in the company of his wife, and had
never left his house during the day. I felt shy of mentioning the subject
to Mr. R., but on the Monday following I could not refrain from asking
him if he remembered looking in on Thursday morning. ' Perfectly,' he
replied ; ' you were having a long confab with your clerk about a telegram,
which you subsequently discovered came from Mr. C.' On my asking him
if he remembered who were present, he answered, ' The clerk, the porter,
you and H.' On my asking him further, he said, 'He was standing at
the corner of the table, opposite you. I addressed him, but he made no
reply, only took up a book and began reading. I could not help looking
at him, as the first thing that struck me was his being at the office so early,
and the next his melancholy look, so different from his usual manner ; but
that I attributed to his being annoyed about the discussion going on. I
left him standing in the same position when I went out, followed by the
porter.' On my making known to Mr. R. that Mr. H. was 14 miles off the
whole of that day he grew quite indignant at my doubting the evidence
of his eyesight, and insisted on the porter being called up and interrogated.
The porter however, like the clerk, had not seen the figure."

Mr. R. has supplied independent and precise corroboration of these
facts, so far as he was a party to them — the one insignificant difference
being that he says he did not speak to Mr. H., but " gesticulated in fun to
him, pointing to Mr. M. and the clerk, who were having an altercation
about a telegram ; but my fun did not seem at all catching, Mr. H.
apparently not being inclined, as he often was, to make fun out of
surrounding circumstances." He adds that he has never experienced any
other hallucination of the senses ; and Mr. Mouat made a similar state-
ment vivd voce to the present writer.

xvni.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 213

Cases of this type naturally suggest the question whether they
may not be parallel to those cases of casual agency (Chap. XIV., § 5),
where the same person has on several occasions, unconnected with any
crisis, been the source of hallucination, now to one friend now to
another. But even supposing such an impression as the above, of an
absent person who is in a normal state, to be telepathic and not purely
subjective in its inception, no one on reflection will maintain that by
pure accident two percipients were casually affected in this extremely
rare way at ike same moment. And if not, then something took place
between them ; which — if what one saw was not suggested to the
other by verbal or physical signs — must be of the nature of thought-
transference.

The next narrative is from Mr. James Cowley, who wrote from
32, Langton Street, Cathay, Bristol, on Jan. 7, 1884 : —

(330) " My eldest son is a twin. The night after his dear mother was
laid in the grave at the Highgate Cemetery (1845) I had him in bed with
me. (I was then residing at 39, Charlotte Terrace, Islington.) Something
causing me to start from my sleep, I saw, with all the distinctness possible
to visual power, my dearest angel receding, in a bent position, as if she had
been blessing one or both of us, with a kiss. At the same instant the
child, only two years and five months old, exclaimed, ' There's mother ! '
You will hardly wonder that, after the night had passed away, I was
perplexed to know whether I had only dreamt it, or whether it was real.
But the reference made to the matter by my dear little motherless one, the
moment he awoke, removed all possibility of doubt."

The next account is from Mr. Charles A. W. Lett, of the Military

and Royal Naval Club, Albemarle Street, W.

"December 3rd, 1885.

(331) "On the 5th April, 1873, my wife's father, Captain Towns,
died at his residence, Cranbrook, Rose Bay, near Sydney, N. S. Wales.
About 6 weeks after his death, my wife had occasion, one evening about
9 o'clock, to go to one of the bedrooms in the house. She was accompanied
by a young lady, Miss Berthon, and as they entered the room — the gas
was burning all the time — they were amazed to see, reflected as it were
on the polished surface of the wardrobe, the image of Captain Towns. It
was barely half figure,1 the head, shoulders, and part of the arms only
showing — in fact, it was like an ordinary medallion portrait, but life-size.
The face appeared wan and pale, as it did before his death ; and he wore
a kind of grey flannel jacket, in which he had been accustomed to sleep.
Surprised and half alarmed at what they saw, their first idea was that a
portrait had been hung in the room, and that what they saw was its reflec- "
tion — but there was no picture of the kind.

" Whilst they were looking and wondering, my wife's sister, Miss
Towns, came into the room, and before either of the others had
time to speak she exclaimed, ' Good gracious ! Do you see papa ? '

1 See p. 33. note.

214 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

One of the housemaids happened to be passing down stairs at the
moment, and she was called in, and asked if she saw anything, and her reply
was, * Oh, miss ! the master.' Graham — Captain Towns' old body servant
— was then sent for, and he also immediately exclaimed, ' Oh, Lord save us !
Mrs. Lett, it's the Captain ! ' The butler was called, and then Mrs. Crane,
my wife's nurse, and they both said what they saw. Finally, Mrs. Towns
was sent for, and, Seeing the apparition, she advanced towards it with her
arm extended as if to touch it, and as she passed her hand over the -panel
of the wardrobe the figure gradually faded away, and never again appeared,
though the room was regularly occupied for a long time after.

" These are the simple facts of the case, and they admit of no doubt ;
no kind of intimation was given to any of the witnesses ; the same
question was put to each one as they came into the room, and the reply
was given without hesitation by each. It was by the merest accident
that I did not see the apparition. I was in the house at the time, but
did not hear when I was called. " C. A. W. LETT."

" We, the undersigned, having read the above statement, certify that
it is strictly accurate, as we both were witnesses of the apparition.

" SARA LETT.
" SIBBIE SMYTH (nee TOWNS)."

Mrs. Lett assures me that neither she nor her sister ever experienced
a hallucination of the senses on any other occasion. She is positive
that the recognition of the appearance on the part of each of the later
witnesses was independent, and not due to any suggestion from the
persons already in the room.

[We hope in time to receive the corroboration of Miss Berthon, and
of Mrs. Crane, Mrs. Lett's nurse.]

These last are cases where the distinction to which I have called
attention (pp. 190-2) must be specially borne in mind. My central
object being to prove that ideas may be transferred from mind to
mind without words or physical signs, I am presenting certain
collective sensory experiences which I think may constitute one type
of such transference. Now believers in communications with the
departed will probably need so little convincing as to the general
theory of the far less startling transferences between living persons,
that on them I am not concerned to press the evidence of this particular
type. But of the rest of my readers I would ask — supposing the above
and similar occurrences to be truly described — on what hypothesis,
other than that of the transferability of hallucinations as such, they
would explain them.

I pass by some other examples of the same kind ; as no insistence
on my point of view in quoting them would prevent my seeming to
some to be explaining away veritable manifestations as subjective
delusions, and to others to be introducing " ghosts " by a side-wind.
But I give the following as a further interesting case of impressions

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 215

which, though probably simultaneous, were not similar. The
narrative was originally printed in July, 1883, in an account of the
Orphanage where it occurred, entitled The Orphanage and Home,
Aberlour, Craigellachie, &c. (pp. 44-5). The narrator throughout
is the Rev. C. Jupp, Warden of the Orphanage. _ -'.\

(332) "In 1875, a man died leaving a widow and six orphan children.
The 3 eldest were admitted into the Orphanage. Three years afterwards
the widow died, and friends succeeded in getting funds to send the rest
here, the youngest being about 4 years of age. [Late one evening, about
6 months after the admission of the younger children, some visitors arrived
unexpectedly ; and] the Warden agreed to take a bed in the little ones'
dormitory, which contained 10 beds, 9 occupied.

" In the morning, at breakfast, the Warden made the following
statement: — 'As near as I can tell I fell asleep about 11 o'clock, and
slept very soundly for some time. I suddenly woke without any apparent
reason, and felt an impulse to turn round, my face being towards the
wall, from the children. Before turning, I looked up and saw a soft
light in the room. The gas was burning low in the hall, and the
dormitory door being open, I thought it probable that the light came
from that source. It was soon evident, however, that such was not
the case. I turned round, and then a wonderful vision met my gaze.
Over the second bed from mine, and on the same side of the room,
there was floating a small cloud of light, forming a halo of the bright-
ness of the moon on an ordinary moonlight night.

" ' I sat upright in bed, looking at this strange appearance, took up
my watch and found the hands pointing to 5 minutes to 1. Every-
thing was quiet, and all the children sleeping soundly. In the bed,
over which the light seemed to float, slept the youngest of the 6 children
mentioned above.

" ' I asked myself, " Am I dreaming?" No ! I was wide awake. I was
seized with a strong impulse to rise and touch the substance, or whatever
it might be (for it was about 5 feet high), and was getting up when some-
thing seemed to hold me back. I am certain I heard nothing, yet I felt
and perfectly understood the words — " No, lie down, it won't hurt you." I
at once did what I felt I was told to do. I fell asleep shortly afterwards
and rose at half-past 5, that being my usual time.

" ' At 6 o'clock I began dressing the children, beginning at the bed
furthest from the one in which I slept. Presently I came to the bed over
which I had seen the light hovering. I took the little boy out, placed him
on my knee, and put on some of his clothes. The child had been talking
with the others ; suddenly he was silent. And then, looking me hard in
the face with an extraordinary expression, he said, "Oh, Mr. Jupp, rny
mother came to me last night. Did you see her ? " For a moment I could
not answer the child. I then thought it better to pass it off, and said,
" Come, we must make haste, or we shall be late for breakfast." '

" The child never afterwards referred to the matter, we are told, nor
has it since ever been mentioned to him. The Warden says it is a mystery
to him ; he simply states the fact and there leaves the matter, being
perfectly satisfied that he was mistaken in no one particular."

216 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

In answer to inquiries, the Rev. C. Jupp writes to us : —

" The Orphanage and Convalescent Home, Aberlour, Craigellachie.

" November 13th, 1883.

" I fear anything the little boy might now say would be unreliable, or
I would at once question him. Although the matter was fully discussed
at the time, it was never mentioned in the hearing of the child ; and yet,
when at the request of friends, the account was published in our little
magazine, and the child read it, his countenance changed, and looking up,
he said, 'Mr. Jupp, that is me.' 1 said, 'Yes, that is what we saw.' He
said, ' Yes,' and then seemed to fall into deep thought, evidently with
pleasant remembrances, for he smiled so sweetly to himself, and seemed to
forget I was present.

" I much regret now that I did not learn something from the child at
the time. " CHAS. JUPP."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Jupp says that he has never had any
other hallucination of the senses ; and adds, " My wife was the only
person of adult age to whom I mentioned the circumstance at the time.
Shortly after, I mentioned it to our Bishop and Primus."

Mrs. Jupp writes, from the Orphanage, on June 23, 1886 : —

" This is to certify that the account of the light seen by the Warden
of this establishment is correct, and was mentioned to me at the time " —
i.e., next morning.

It is possible that the child's experience here was a dream ; if so,
the case might be taken as a link . between the two classes of
phenomena — collective hallucinations and simultaneous dreams —
which I have referred to as so closely related (p. 171).1

I will give one more " recognised " case, which presents the
curious feature that the figure seen was that of one of the per-

1 In the Life and Correspondence of Charles Mathews, by Mrs. Mathews, pp. 94, 95,
a case is recorded which again illustrates this relation. One night, when Mr. and
the future Mrs. Mathews were intimate acquaintances, but without any intention
of marrying, and when they were at a distance from one another, they had a precisely
similar vision, which so violently affected both of them that they fell out of their
respective beds, and were found on their respective floors ; Mr. Mathews was so much
affected as to be extremely ill for a day afterwards. The experiences were independently
described long before they were compared. The joint vision was one of which the
substance might have been easily suggested to either of the parties by a recent incident ;
it was in fact the apparition of Mr. Mathews' former wife, who, before her death, had
tried to make them promise to marry one another ; but it is difficult to believe that it
was by accident that experiences so unique as those described corrresponded and
coincided. If, on the other hand, the incident was telepathic, and one experience was the
cause or the condition of the other, it is interesting to remark that the visions in fact much
more resembled waking hallucinations than genuine dreams ; for Mrs. Mathews especially
records that both she and Mr. Mathews had been unable to sleep through restlessness.

The following case is interesting enough to deserve quotation, though not ostensibly
"collective," and possibly no more than a single subjective hallucination. We received
it from the Rev. Arthur Bellamy, of Publow Vicarage, Bristol, in February, 1886 ; but
the particulars were first published in 1878.

' ' When a girl at school my wife made an agreement with a fellow pupil, Miss
W., that the one of them who died first should, if Divinely permitted, appear after her
decease to the survivor. In 1874 my wife, who had not seen or heard anything of her
former school-friend for some years, casually heard of her death. The news reminded
her of her former agreement, and then, becoming nervous, she told me of it. I knew of
my wife's compact, but I had never seen a photograph of her friend, or heard any
description of her. [Mr. Bellamy told the present writer, in conversation, that his mind
had not been in the least dwelling on the compact.]

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 217

cipients. I have spoken before (Chap. XII, § 8, first note) of a form
of hallucination, as I hold it, which consists in seeming to see oneself
as a person outside one ; and I have also pointed out (p. 85, note) that
one of our informants who has had an experience of the sort is also
one of the few persons who have given us evidence of what I have
called casual agency, exercised in the midst of quite ordinary life.
Now the fact that a person who has, so to speak, casually impressed
herself, has at other times casually impressed others, is in itself of
great interest ; but it leads us on to the following still more interest-
ing case, where the " double " was seen by its original and by others
at the same time. The account is from Mrs. Hall, of The Yews,
Gretton, near Kettering, and was received in December, 1883.

(333) " In the autumn of 1863, I was living with my husband and
first baby, a child of 8 months, in a lone house, called Sibberton, near
Wansford, Northamptonshire, which in by-gone days had been a church.
As the weather became more wintry, a married cousin and her husband

"A night or two afterwards as I was sleeping with my wife, a fire brightly burning in
the room and a candle alight, I suddenly awoke, and saw a lady sitting by the side of the
bed where my wife was sleeping soundly. At once I sat up in the bed, and gazed so
intently that even now I can recall her form and features. Had I the pencil and the brush
of a Millais, I could transfer to canvas an exact likeness of the ghostly visitant. I
remember that I was much struck, as I looked intently at her, with the careful arrange-
ment of her coiffure, every single hair being most carefully brushed down. How long I
sat and gazed I cannot say, but directly the apparition ceased to be, I got out of bed to
see if any of my wife's garments had by any means optically deluded me. I found
nothing in the line of vision but a bare wall. Hallucination on my part I rejected as out
of the question, and I doubted not that I had really seen an apparition. Returning to
bed, I lay till my wife some hours after awoke and then I gave her an account of her
friend's appearance. I described her colour, form, &c., all of which exactly tallied with
my wife's recollection of Miss W. Finally I asked, ' But was there any special point to
strike one in her appearance ?' ' Yes,' my wife promptly replied ; ' we girls use_d to tease
her at school for devoting so much time to the arrangement of her hair.' This was the
very thing which I have said so much struck me. Such are the simple facts.

"I will only add that till 1874 I had never seen an apparition, and that I have not
seen one since. "ARTHUR BELLAMY."

We have also seen an account written by Mrs. Bellamy in May, 1879, which entirely
agrees with the above, except that she " thinks it was a fortnight after the death " that
the vision occurred, and that the light was "the dim light of a night-lamp." She
says, " The description accorded in all points with my deceased friend." In conversation
Mr. Bellamy described the form as seen in a very clear light (see Vol i., pp. 550-1) ; and
this may account for his idea that the room itself was lighted by fire and candle.

This experience, as I have said, may have been purely subjective ; and identification
of a person's appearance by mere description is generally to be regarded with great doubt.
But in view of the circumstances, and especially of the fact that Mr. Bellamy has never
had any other hallucination, two alternative hypotheses seem at least worth suggesting.
(1) Believers in telepathic phantasms may suspect Mr. Bellamy's experience to have been
conditioned by his wife's state of mind — possibly even by a dream, forgotten on waking,
in which her friend figured. (2) Believers in the possibility of post-mortem communica-
tions, if they believe that this was one of them, might further suppose that Mr. Bellamy's
experience depended on a psychical influence exercised in the first instance on Mrs.
Bellamy, though acting below the level of her normal consciousness — which would mak»
the case parallel to Nos. 242 and 355. To me, I confess, this appears a more reasonable
supposition than that a direct influence (so to speak) missed its mark, and was exercised
on Mr. Bellamy by a stranger who cared nothing about him.

I may mention that we have another first-hand case of just the same type, where the
percipient was unaware of any compact, and was quite unoccupied with the thought of
the dead person. She was, however, a young child at the time, and I therefore do not
quote the account.

218 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

came on a visit. One night, when we were having supper, an apparition .
stood at the end of the sideboard. We four sat at the dining-table ; and yet,
with great inconsistency, / stood as this ghostly visitor again, in a spotted,
light muslin summer dress, and without any terrible peculiarities of air
or manner. We all four saw it, my husband having attracted our
attention to it. saying, ' It is Sarah,' in a tone of recognition, meaning
me. It at once disappeared. None of us felt any fear, it seemed too
natural and familiar.

" The apparition seemed utterly apart from myself and my feelings, as
a picture or statue. My three relatives, who, with me, saw the
apparition, are all dead; they died in about the years 1868-69.

" SARAH JANE HALL."

The dress in which the figure appeared was not like any that Mrs. Hall
had at the time, though she wore one like it nearly two years afterwards.
Mrs. Hall has had other visual hallucinations, which were all connected
with ill-health or nervous shock ; one which occurred a few months before
that here described had represented herself as if " laid out."

I now pass to auditory cases. I have spoken of the caution
which these require ; l but the following instances must, I think,
have been more than mere misinterpretations of real sounds.

The first account is from a lady of unimpeachable veracity ; and
the account, though written in the third person, is first-hand.

"November, 1884.

(334) " Some 20 years ago, Miss G. [the narrator] was recovering from
a severe illness, and it was of the utmost importance for her to have a

1 Even the sound of the human voice — though ordinarily so distinctive — may be
illusory. For example, we should hardly, I think, be justified in regarding the two
following cases as other than joint illusions, due to some undiscovered source of sound in
the house. Mr. Gascoigne Bevan, of the Bank House, Sudbury, writes, in 1884 : —

" Some few years ago and since, I have been living in this house, and manager of the
bank. I returned home one evening in the summer time with a friend. On entering by
the garden door, we were both greeted with the sounds of children's laughter, peal after
peal, all over the house. ' Why,' says my friend, ' I did not know you had children in
the house, or I would not have come.' T don't know why I answered, but I did so:
'Hush, don't say anything ; you will frighten Mrs. Springett, my_ housekeeper.' I ran
all over the house, looking in all the rooms, in vain, for an explanation. I know there was
no one in the house except Mrs. Springett, her old husband and an under servant."

[Mr. Bevan believes that the friend who shared this experience has recently died in
Africa.]

Miss Twynam, of 1, Waterloo Place, Southampton, writes, on Nov. 12, 1885 : —

"I had myself repeatedly heard the voice calling my name, 'Ellen,' at various
intervals, extending over some months, and had mentioned the fact to the different
members of the family, but never to my knowledge in the presence of the servants. I
have always been laughed at, and told it was only my fancy, and no one then had heard
it but myself. On one occasion, I and my sister were in the drawing-room, and my
mother and aunt, who were both invalids, were in their respective bedrooms upstairs, on
opposite sides of the house ; while my brother was in another sitting-room downstairs, on
the other side of the hall : and the servants were both in the kitchen, which was an
underground one. I and my sister heard the voice distinctly call ' Ellen, Ellen ! ' — a
clear, high, refined woman's voice, but with something strange and unusual about it.
My sister at once noticed it, turning to me and saying, ' There, I have heard it myself
this time. ' I still, however, thought it might really be someone, so went to my mother,
asking whether she had called. She said, 'No, 'but she had heard someone calling me,
and thought it was my aunt. I went to her, and she said exactly the same, only thought
it was my mother. I then went to my brother. He said, 'No ; ' but had heard someone

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 219

good night, in order to wind her up for a journey to Edinburgh next day.
All the house was sent to bed early, and the utmost quiet enjoined upon
everybody. A devoted friend, whose name was Louisa, went to bed with
her, in order to be close at hand if anything should be wanted. About an
hour after she had lain down she was startled by a loud outcry, ' Louie,
Louie ! ' as if someone was in urgent want of assistance. Miss G. thought
that probably someone had slipped and was hanging over the banisters ;
she anxiously turned to her friend trying to rouse her. Her friend made
no offer to rise, but said, in a very marked way, ' Did you hear that
voice ? It Was my mother ; I hear it constantly.' Next morning every
inquiry was made ; but no call whatever had been made."

I have already mentioned that the hearing of the name, in the tones
of a familiar voice, is one of the commonest and most recurrent forms
of subjective hallucination ; but whatever view be taken of the origin
of the friend's impression, we may reasonably suppose that it was
through her that it was communicated to Miss G.

The next example was sent to us by Mr. George Saxon, of Park-
lands, Bruton, Somersetshire, who completely confirms the narrative
as far as he was concerned. The following is his wife's account : —

"February 26th, 1885.

(335) "On first coming to this house to reside, in September, 1879,
myself and two servants were in the kitchen talking one evening at
about 10.30 ; and we all three distinctly heard a voice coming from the
next room, or the passage that leads from the kitchen to this room,
saying three times, ' Are you coming ? ' On the first occasion I answered
and said, ' I am coming, dear,' thinking it was my husband calling, whom
I supposed to be in the next room. The voice again said the second
time, ' Are you coming ? ' and one of the servants said, ' You had better
go ; master is calling.' The voice again said the third time, ' Are you

call quite plainly. I then went down to the servants, and asked whether they had heard
anyone calling. They said, ' Yes ; ' they thought it was mistress. But there was nothing
about them to lead me to think they were playing any trick, and they had never any idea
that I had heard this voice before. The voice sounded to me as though it were above me,
and yet very close to me, and it gave me a strange uncomfortable feeling. I dp not think
it was the servants, as they answered so naturally, as a matter of course, that it was their
mistress who had called. Our house stood in a garden near the village, but I am sure it
was no one from outside, as the voice was so decidedly in the house, and apparently close
to us. " ELLEN B. TWYNAM."

, • Miss Twynam's sister says : —

"I perfectly remember the occurrence alluded to by my sister. I distinctly heard
the voice calling her name, and noticed at the time that it was very clear, and resembled
a woman's voice, but with a strangely unnatural sound which attracted my attention.
I remember turning to her and saying, ' I have heard it for myself this time,' as she had
mentioned the fact of repeatedly hearing her name called, but I had never heard it,
though other people had done so before ; but on this occasion everybody in the house
heard it at the same time. I have no doubt whatever that the voice came from no one in
the house. "MARIA TWYNAM." -

I have carefully questioned these informants, and believe that the account is accurate.
But it seems possible to suppose that some peculiar sound in the house was interpreted
in the way which Miss E. B. Twynam's description of her own experience had
suggested.

It is curious that we have another case where an unaccountable sound, heard several
times by two persons in the same house, was the call "Ellen, Ellen," which was the name
of one of them. Perhaps there is something in the sound which renders it easily simulated.

220 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

coming 1 ' I then went through the passage before mentioned, to the
next room, where I thought to find my husband, there being no one else
in the house except three children, who were upstairs fast asleep. On
going through the passage into the next room, I found no one there,
and no light, it being quite dark. I then returned to the kitchen and
obtained a light, and went through the said room into the room beyond,
where I found my husband, who was busy writing letters, and he had not
called or spoken. This room he was in had the door shut. We all thought
it very strange, and went up to see the children, who were all fast
asleep. One of the servants before mentioned, I should say, had left
my service and had only come down by train (10 miles) for the day,
and was to return [arriving home at 8 p.m.] by the last train, which she
missed and had to stay the night. She had a daughter-in-law expecting
to be confined, to whom she was going back. She was an elderly person,
had lost a son not long before, and used to see at times ' ghosts,' or what
appeared human beings, but disappeared suddenly and mysteriously.

" CAROLINE AUGUSTA SAXON."

Mr. Saxon adds : —

" The house is quite an isolated one, standing in gardens away from a
road, and about half-a-mile from the town. The doors and windows were
closed. The voice was evidently within the house ; and could not have
come from anyone in the house. Our children's ages were respectively
9 years, 7 years, 5 years and 7 months. We were sure they were all
asleep at the time, as we went up at once to see. I asked them the next
day ; besides, it was not the voice of the children, but seemed a low
plaintive voice. Notwithstanding, iny wife and the two servants thought
it must have been myself calling from the next room, I being the only
other being about."

I have examined the localities, and saw how natural it was that Mrs.
Saxon should imagine her husband to be calling from the nearer room. She
describes the voice as very distinct and startling. She has occasionally
had the hallucination of hearing her own name called, when overtired ;
but never of anything else.

Here, as in the last example, we have to note a slight tendency
to subjective hallucination, which in the servant's case may have been
intensified by recent trouble ; and, without absolutely excluding
the hypothesis of telepathic influence from her daughter-in-law,1 I
still think it more probable that a purely subjective hallucination
on her part, easily referable to her anxiety about her daughter-in-
law's condition, was psychically transferred to her two companions.

The next example is from the Rev. W. Raymond, Rector of Bally -
heigue, Co. Kerry. I need not repeat with regard to it the
comments made on cases 330 and 331. Whatever view be taken as
to the origin of the sound, it is impossible to suppose that it was by
accident that the two identical impressions so exactly coincided.

1 The repetition of the experience somewhat favours this hypothesis (see p. 105).

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 221

"December 18th, 1884.

(336) " About 30 years ago, Miss Mildred Nash, my mother's aunt, died
in my mother's house, at the advanced age of 82 years. She had been blind
for some years, and an orphan cousin of mine had been -much in attendance
on her. My aunt lived and died in a room on the ground floor in the front
of our house, which was situated in a retired street of Tralee. A few days
after her death, my cousin and I were sitting, on a summer evening, at the
window of the room over the room in which my aunt had died. I heard
distinctly the words ' Rosy, Rosy ' (my cousin's name), apparently from the
room beneath, and in my aunt's voice ; then I heard my cousin answer
to the call ; she also heard the voice. I, struck with the strangeness of the
circumstance, at once threw up the window to see if it were a voice from
the street, but there was no one visible, and there could be no one there
without being seen. I then searched the house all around, but there was
nobody near except ourselves — my cousin and myself. The tale ends there ;
nothing afterwards happened in connection ; — merely the unaccountable
fact that two persons did independently hear such a voice as I have
mentioned. I heard both the name called and the answer.

"Win. RAYMOND."

Writing on January 9th, 1885, Mr. Raymond says : —
" I send you, as soon as I was able to get it, the enclosed statement in
corroboration, sent me by my cousin. She mentioned an item that helped
to fix the facts in her memory (and which shows the superstition of the
people here), that her neighbours all said she should not have answered,
but, as she says, no harm came of it. This was my only experience of
auditory hallucination."

The enclosed statement was as follows : —

"Tralee, January 8th, 1885.

" My cousin, Rev. William Raymond, has asked me if I remember
about the voice we heard at the time of the death of old Miss Nash, his
aunt. I do remember that a few days after her death he and I were
sitting, one summer evening, in the room over the room where she died,
that I heard my name called, apparently from that room and in her voice,
and that I answered the call, and that we searched and could find no one
about who could have spoken. " ROSE RAYMOND."

In answer to an inquiry, Miss Raymond states that this is her sole
experience of an auditory hallucination.

It remains to illustrate the musical type of collective hallucina-
tion.. The following account is from Mr. and Mrs. Sewell, of Eden
Villas, Albert Park, Didsbury. The latter (writing on March 25th,
1885) tells us that in the spring of 1863, a little girl of theirs, called
Lilly, was ill.

(337) " My husband came home about 3 o'clock, and, to please Lilly ,-
said he would have his dinner in the bedroom with her. I sat beside the bed
with one of Lilly's hands in mine, my husband was eating his dinner, and
one little boy was talking to Lilly, and all were quietly trying to amuse
the patient, when our attention was roused by sounds of the music of an

harp, which proceeded from a corner cupboard in one corner of

222 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

the room. All was hushed, and I said, ' Lilly, do you hear that pretty
music 1 ' and she said, ' No,' at which I was much surprised, for she was a
great lover of music. The sounds increased until the room was full of
melody, when it gradually and slowly seemed to pass down the stairs and
ceased. The servant, who was occupied in the kitchen, two stories below,
heard the sounds, and our eldest daughter, who was going into the larder,
stopped in the passage to listen and wonder where the music came from,
and the servant called to her, ' Do you hear that music 1 ' It was then a
few moments past 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

" The next day (Sunday) my old nurse and aunt came up to see how
Lilly was, and were, with my husband, all in the room with the child.
I had gone down into the kitchen to prepare some little dainty milk-food
for her, when the same sounds of ^Eolian music were heard by all three
in the room, and I heard the same in the kitchen. Monday passed, but
we had no repetition. On Tuesday, at the same hour, we [i.e., Mr. and
Mrs. Sewell] once more heard the same wailing ^Eolian music from the
same part of the room ; again it increased in volume, until the room was
full of wailing melody ; and again did the sounds appear to pass through
the door, down the stairs, and out at the front door. Now, this music
was heard three different days, at the same time each day, and not only by
those in the room with the child, but by myself, my daughter, and the
servant, two flights of stairs below the room the child was in ; and on
the second day by my aunt and nurse and the children, who were in the
dining-room.

"One circumstance, I think, was very remarkable : the child herself,
who had a perfect passion for music, never heard a sound. There cannot
be any mistake in the sounds, for no instrument played by human hands
can make the same sounds as the wailing ^olian harp. We had lived in
the same house 6 years, and remained in it 12 years more, and we never
heard similar music either before or after. " SAB AH A. SEWELL."

Mr. Sewell says :- "April, 1885.

" The only confirmation which is now available is that of myself. I
can speak with all sincerity. I heard the sweet music identically with
my wife. The music was heard on Saturday, 2nd of May, a little before
4 o'clock in the afternoon, also on the next day at about the same time,
and also on the following Tuesday at about the same hour. Those who
heard the music were my wife, myself, my wife's aunt, the nurse, our son
Richard, aged 7 ; our son Thomas, aged 9 (the last four all dead), our
eldest daughter, aged 11, and our servant, who shortly left us and went
to Ireland to her husband, who was a soldier, and was soon lost sight of.
Our eldest daughter is now in New York, and I have no doubt but that
she will remember the circumstance. I am quite satisfied that the music
heard was not produced by someone at a distance, for our house was then
situated in a long garden, some 50 yards distant from the public road, and
the adjoining house to ours was unoccupied at the time. The sound was
not a muffled sound at all, but the soft, wild notes of an ^^Eolian harp, which
rose and fell distinctly, and increased gradually, until the room was full
of sound, as loud as the full swell of an organ, and it rolled slowly down
the stairs, dying softly on the ear in weird cadences. I am certain it was
not produced by human fingers. " MATHEW SEWELL."

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 223

I have copied the following extract from a letter written to Mr. Sewell
by his daughter, Mrs. Lee, and dated July 20th, 1885.

" Williams Bridge, New York.

" I do distinctly remember hearing the music before Lilly's death,
and also remember the impression it made on us children at the time, the
feeling of terror and fear we had, at not understanding where the music
came from and what kind of music it was."

[A personal interview with Mr. and Mrs. Sewell has made evident to
me how uniquely impressive to them this incident was. The music ap-
peared to issue from a particular corner of the room, Which was not one
formed by external walls ; and the nature of the sound makes it hard to
explain as an objective effect, due to air or water ; while the fact that
one person present, with sensitive ears, did not share the experience seems
almost fatal to such an explanation. The sound lasted on each occasion
not more than half a minute. The little girl died on the Tuesday evening.
If the hallucination be connected with her abnormal condition, the incident
(like case 335 above) would belong to the succeeding section.]

A further example of the musical class, with even more complete
attestation, has on account of its length been placed in the
Supplement (p. 639) : the following shorter specimen may be given
here. The late Mrs. Yates, of 54, Columbia Square, E., wrote in 1884: —

(338) " In 1870 I lost a dearly loved daughter, 21 years old ; she died
at noonday, of aneurism. At night, my only other daughter was with me,
when all at once we both assumed a listening attitude, and we both heard
the sweetest of spiritual music, although it seemed so remote, my ears were
hurt listening so intently. Till some hours after, my dear girl and I were
afraid to inquire of each other had we heard it, for fear we were deluded, but
we found both had been so privileged and blessed."

To our request for Mr. Yates's testimony, Mrs. Yates replied : —

" Mr. Yates perfectly well remembers how myself and the daughter
who is now living were affected by hearing music that night, such as
mortals never sang ; but I have to write for him, he being troubled by inca-
pacity of his right hand." (Signed as correct) " GEORGE YATES."

The daughter wrote as follows, on Oct. 9, 1884 : —

"31, St. John's Street Road, Clerkenwell, E.G.

" I can speak with certainty respecting the beautiful music my dear
mother and I heard on the 26th November, 1870. I shall never forget it;
we were both afraid to speak, it was so exquisite. . " A. BEILBY."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Beilby adds : —

" We were living at 3, Henry Street, Pentonville. The two windows
in the room were shut tight and fastened ; and as near as I can remember,
it must have been between 2 and 3 in the morning. The music lasted
several minutes." She further says that, when the sounds began, her
mother exclaimed, "Anne, do you hear that ? " — so that her mother's state-
ment is not quite exact ; bub she confirms the fact that some hours passed
before they ventured to describe their impressions to one another.

224 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

The foregoing instances may perhaps suffice to show that a purely
psychical account of these joint experiences — as due either partly or
wholly to a thought-transference between the percipients — is at all
events possible ; and that acceptance of the phenomena as genuine, i.e.,
as percepts truly described, does not imply any materialistic theory of
phantasmal beings who travel about through space (sometimes in
their carriages) on their own account. And possibly a certain number
of my readers may further agree with me in supposing some, at any
rate, of these cases to have been in their inception purely subjective,
and will not feel the need of invoking for them an unknown or
post-mortem "agency," however little disposed to rule the possibility
of such agency out of court. I cannot, indeed, deny a certain
force to an objection which Mr. Myers urges,1 that we know of
no instances where a hallucination which can be connected with
insanity or other distinctly morbid conditions in the person im-
pressed, and which is thus quite clearly proved to be purely
subjective, has become collective in the way supposed. But then
neither do we know of instances where a person in one of these
morbid conditions has exercised any other form of telepathic in-
fluence. We have no instances of telepathic impressions of the
deaths of dying lunatics. The ultimate conditions of telepathic
agency are as little known to us as the ultimate conditions of telepathic
percipience ; and transient hallucinations of the sane, such as those of
the preceding examples, differ so greatly in their nature and ostensible
conditions from the types of hallucination to which Mr. Myers points
as never transferred, that it seems rash to assume that they may not
differ also in the particular point of transferability. At any rate,
whatever the difficulties of that view, it is one that may be
provisionally entertained by those who see equal difficulties in any
other ; and whatever my own surmises as to future discovery may be,
in the present state of the evidence I feel as much bound here to
press the theory of thought-transference, before admitting causes of
an obscurer kind, as in a former chapter to press the theory of
unconscious physical indications before admitting the reality of
thought-transference.

The degree in which the infectious character may exist is very hard
indeed to determine ; for the majority of hallucinations (purely sub-
jective and telepathic alike) occur to persons who are alone — silence
and recueillement being apparently favourable conditions; and we

1 See pp. 280-2.

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 225

have no means of knowing how many of these hallucinations might
have been shared by some one else, if some one else had happened to
be present at the time. All that can be said is that, taking the
whole class of transient hallucinations of the sane, the cases where the
experience has been shared by a second person appear to be more
numerous than those where a second person has been present, awake,
and rightly situated, and has not shared the experience. Nor, again,
can I at all adequately explain why these phenomena should be a form
of mental impression specially liable to spread to neighbouring minds.
That those of them which are telepathically produced in the first
instance should have a tendency to spread in this way may appear,
perhaps, less remarkable, if we remember that a telepathic impulse, as
such, seems sometimes to have very distinct and peculiar physiological
effects ; witness Mrs. Newnham's exhaustion (Vol. I., p. 64) in experi-
ments where the ideas conveyed were in themselves of a quite
unexciting sort. But as regards the transference in purely subjective
cases, all I can suggest is that sensory hallucinations, and especially the
occasional hallucinations of sane and healthy people, are to begin with
and in themselves very peculiar things ; and that a fresh peculiarity,
meeting us in something that we do not completely see round
or understand, is less staggering than if it met us in something
of which we have held our knowledge to be complete. At any
rate the fact, if admitted, that purely subjective hallucinations may
spontaneously become collective, greatly simplifies the consideration
of the collective cases whose origin is traceable to an external " agent."
The appearance of an absent person's figure to several spectators at
once has had in it something specially startling ; and when
associated with the idea of death, it has almost inevitably sug-
gested a material or " etherial " spirit — an independent travel-
ling ghost. But as soon as the experience is analysed, it is found
to involve nothing new or antagonistic to scientific conceptions.
In being connected with the absent person, it is merely on a par with
other specimens of telepathy — e.g., many of those cited in the
preceding chapters : in being collective, it is merely on a par with
other specimens of hallucination — e.g., some of those already cited in
this chapter. Still, though a telepathic impulse from an absent,
person may not be an essential condition, it may be, and I believe is,
an exceptionally favourable condition, for a collective hallucination.
And I now proceed to the final group of examples, of which that
condition is the distinguishing mark.

VOL. II. Q

226 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

§ 6. I will begin the list with the auditory class. The following
account is from Mr. J. Wood Beilby, of Redbank Cottage, Elgin

Road, Beechworth, Victoria.

"October 17th, 1883.

(339) " A young lady, a friend of my wife's, staying with us in the bush,
had gone some hours, on horseback, to our post-town — some eight miles dis-
tant— when my wife and I in the house, a servant-man and woman and my
adopted son, a youth, in an outside kitchen, heard this young lady scream,
and call out, ' Oh, Johnnie ! Johnnie ! ' — that being my boy's name, he
being a usual attendant to the fair equestrian. All simultaneously rushed
out ; but nothing further could be heard or seen of the exclaimant for
nearly an hour, when she arrived, and informed us that at a spot between
four and five miles distant she had to open a gate. Trying to do this
without dismounting, she leaned over it from her side-saddle to undo a
sort of hasp. Her horse took fright at something and bounded aside,
leaving her, happily, detached from him, hanging over the gate. She said
she shrieked for help, and fancied ' Johnnie ' was behind, but got extri-
cated— I forget how — and her horse caught. She remounted, and came
on to us without injury but the fright. It was absolutely impossible her
natural voice could have been heard over a forest country intervening for
even one-third of the distance. The strange thing to me is that others, not
so specially gifted with magnetic impressions as I am, should have
simultaneously and distinctly heard the ejaculation. All instantly acted
a reply, going out of the several houses which they were in at the time,
and making for an entrance gate, expecting to find the lady in some
difficulty close at hand ; and all were astonished that she was not even
in view upon an extensive plain, skirted by the forest-land she had
to traverse. " J. WOOD BEILBY."

Mrs. Beilby corroborates as follows : —

" I perfectly recollect the voice being heard, as narrated above by my
husband. I vouch for the accuracy of the narration.

" CATHERINE W. BEILBY."

In another account, written on January 28th, 1886, and signed by
Mr. and Mrs. Beilby, it is more clearly brought out that the young lady,
Miss Snell, actually called out the name, " Johnnie, Johnnie." The only
point of difference between the two accounts is that the second, instead of
saying that all four persons rushed out simultaneously, states that Mr.
and Mrs. Beilby went out and called to the servants that Miss Snell had
returned, and that " they said they heard her call, and immediately went
to the gate of entrance to the homestead," but found no one there.

Mr. Beilby further adds : —

" The homestead is isolated from any other residence, some 3 miles ;
and no one was about at the time, except the servants and the employers
in separate but closely adjacent buildings." He implies that he has had no
other auditory hallucination.

The next account, which was first received by the Rev. W.
Stainton Moses from an intimate friend of the agent's, was revised

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 227

by his parents, the percipients, who have since again read it over and
pronounced it correct.

"1881.

(340) "About two years ago W. L. left England for America. Nine
months since, he married, and hoped to bring his wife home to see his
mother, to whom he was tenderly attached. On February 4th, however,
he was taken with sudden illness, which terminated fatally on the 12th,
about 8 p.m. On that night, about three-quarters of an hour after the
parents of W. L. had retired to rest in England, the mother heard the
clear voice of her son speaking. Her husband who also heard it, asked
his wife if it was she who was speaking. Neither of them had been asleep,
and she replied, ' No ! Keep quiet ! ' The voice continued, ' As I cannot
come to England, mother, I have come now to see you.' At this time
both parents believed their son to be in perfect health in America, and
were daily expecting a letter to announce his return home. A note was
made of this very startling occurrence ; and when a fortnight since news of
the son's death arrived, it was found to correspond with the date on which
the spirit-voice T had announced his presence in England. The widow said
that the preparations for departure had nearly been completed, and that
her husband showed much anxiety to get to England and see his mother."

[Unfortunately the percipients in this case dislike the subject, and it
has been thought better not to press them with further inquiries. Other-
wise we should of course have ascertained whether or not they had ever
had other hallucinations.]

The next account is from Commander T. W. Aylesbury (late of
the Indian Navy), of Sutton, Surrey. The case, at first sight, may
seem as if it belonged to the reciprocal class ; but Commander
Aylesbury's vision did not include enough detail to justify us in
regarding it as other than subjective, the scene being apparently such

as he might naturally have conjured up.

"December, 1882.

(341) "The writer, when 13 years of age, was capsized in a boat, when
landing on the Island of Bally, east of Java, and was nearly drowned.
On coming to the surface, after being repeatedly submerged, the boy called
his mother. This amused the boat's crew, who spoke of it afterwards, and
jeered him a good deal about it. Months after, on arrival in England, the
boy went to his home, and while telling his mother of his narrow escape,
he said, ' While I was under water, I saw you all sitting in this room ; you
were working something white. I saw you all — mother, Emily, Eliza, and
Ellen.' His mother at once said, ' Why yes, and I heard you cry out for
me, and I sent Emily to look out of the window, for I remarked that
something had happened to that poor boy.' The time, owing to the
difference of E. longitude, corresponded with the time when the voice was
heard."

Commander Aylesbury adds in another letter : —

" I saw their features (my mother's and sisters'), the room and the

1 See p. 48, note.
VOL. II. Q 2

228 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

furniture, particularly the old-fashioned Venetian blinds. My eldest sister
was seated next to my mother."

Asked as to the time of the accident, Commander Aylesbury says : —

" I think the time must have been very early in the morning.
I remember a boat capsized the day before, and washed up. The mate said
we would go and bring her off in the morning, but the exact time I cannot
remember. It was a terrible position, and the surf was awful. We were
knocked end over end, and it was the most narrow escape I ever had — and
I have had many ; but this one was so impressed on my mind with the
circumstances — the remarks and jeers of the men, — ' Boy, what was you
calling for your mother for1? Do you think she could pull you out of
Davey Jones' locker,' &c., with other language I cannot use."

The following is an extract from a letter written to Commander
Aylesbury by one of his sisters, and forwarded to us, in 1883 : —

" I distinctly remember the incident you mention in your letter (the
voice calling ' Mother ' ) ; it made such an impression on my mind, I shall
never forget it. We were sitting quietly at work one evening ; it was
about 9 o'clock. I think it must have been late in the summer as we had
left the street door open. We first heard a faint cry of ' Mother'; we all
looked up, and said to one another, ' Did you hear that ? Someone cried
out " Mother." ' We had scarcely finished speaking, when the voice again
called, ' Mother ' twice in quick succession, the last cry a frightened,
agonising cry. We all started up, and mother said to me, ' Go to the door
and see what is the matter.' I ran directly into the street and stood some
few minutes, but all was silent and not a person to be seen ; it was a lovely
evening, not a breath of air. Mother was sadly upset about it. I
remember she paced the room, and feared that something had happened
to you. She wrote down the date the next day, and when you came home
and told us how near you had been drowned, and the time of day, father
said it would be about the time 9 o'clock would be with us. I know the
date and the time corresponded."

[The difference of time at the two places is a little more than
7 hours ; consequently 9 in the evening in England would correspond
with " very early in the morning " of the next day at the scene of the
accident. But the incident happened too long ago for memory to be
trusted as to the exactitude of the coincidence.] rT-l°3J

In the next case, though the sound heard was apparently vocal,
it was not articulate ; and it can scarcely be pronounced impossible
that such an effect might be produced by bubbling air, or some other
local cause. The coincidence, however, appears to have been very
close, though perhaps not so absolutely precise as is alleged ; and the
form of impression is not without analogy (see e.g., case 288 above).
The account is signed by one of the percipients, but is in the words of
her son, Mr. W. R. Weyer, of 7, Willis Street, St. Paul's, Norwich.

"June, 1883.
(342) " At the time that this occurrence took place, my mother's brother

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 229

was lying in a dangerous condition, suffering from a complication of
disorders, together with an old wound received in the Crimea some time
previous ; consequently at that time my parents' minds were in a great state
of anxiety. It was on the night of July 6th, 1865 ; my parents were retir-
ing to rest at a somewhat late hour, when they were both suddenly startled
by a sound of three distinct sobs as (according to my mother's experience)
of a person dying. My father immediately arose, procured a light, and a
thorough search was made, but with no success. On again retiring, the
sobs were again repeated, this time in a perfectly clear and distinct
manner.1 My mother then noted the time, which was then 10.50 p.m.,
remarking at the same time that we should hear bad news. After making
another search they again retired to rest, the sobs being heard no more.

" On the next day my mother received a letter bearing the Chatham
post-mark, stating that her brother, David Mackenzie Annison, had died at
Chatham Hospital on the night of July the 5th, at 10.50, being the exact
time that the sobs were heard by my parents.

" WILLIAM ROBT. WEYEE."
[Signed as correct by Mrs. Weyer, the surviving witness]

"MARIA E. WEYER."

Mr. Weyer, the father, died a year after the occurrence. In answer
to inquiries, Mr. W. R. Weyer adds : —

" My parents informed my cousin and aunt (who is now deceased) of
the circumstance, before she received the letter; and my aunt, who is just
dead, remembered the circumstance quite well. My grandmother often
used to mention it. I have appealed to my cousin to write her recollection
of the incident, but I cannot at present persuade her to do so."

In conversation Mrs. Weyer stated that there were no water-pipes
near the room, and that the sound seemed startlingly near — close to the
head of the bed. She is not at all predisposed to alarms or fancies, and
has never had any other hallucination — unless we are to reckon as such a
startling sound of knocks which others also heard, and for which no
external cause could be discovered. The idea which she expressed that
the sounds in the present case were premonitory of bad news, since it was
not founded on any sufficient knowledge of the evidence for telepathic
occurrences as facts in Nature, indicates, no doubt, an uncritical acceptance
of marvels. But the only question for us is how far such a habit of mind
may have affected the evidence to the facts ; and my strong impression is
that it has not appreciably affected it. We may regard it as probable,
however, that the sobs were not described as like those "of a person
dying" until after the fact of the death was realised.

The following is the result of an independent inquiry as to the time of
death.

1 As regards the repetition, see p. 105. As to the three sobs, in examining a large
mass of evidence respecting abnormal phenomena (and especially second-hand accounts),
one finds this number recurring with somewhat noticeable frequency — which at any rate
suggests unconscious modification of the facts. Nor need we assume any specially
superstitious habit of mind on the part of the witness, to find it natural that, at the
points where memory is hazy, slight resulting errors should take lines which are (so
to speak) marked out for them by literary or religious associations.

230 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

" Melville Hospital, Chatham.
"July 18th, 1885.

" In reply to your letter asking to be informed of the exact hour of the
death of David Mackenzie Annison, I beg to state that there was a David
Annison, chief stoker, aged 38, admitted into this hospital 26th June,
1865, from H.M.S. ' Cumberland.' He was suffering from chronic liver
disease and jaundice. He died at 11.35 p.m., on the 5th July, 1865, and
his friends took his body away to Sheerness.

" In case of a death in this establishment, the body is seen by the
medical officer on duty, who himself notifies on the man's ticket the hour
and minute of his decease. It was from this document I gathered the
information you required. « BELGRAVE NINNIS, M.D.

" (Deputy Inspector-General.)"

With respect to this point, Mr. Weyer writes, on August 7th, 1885 : —

" In reference to the mistake regarding the time, I have consulted my
mother upon that point, and she asserts that she might possibly be
mistaken, but of this fact she is most positive, viz., that the time she noted
on that night exactly corresponded with the time given in the message which
arrived next day ; this, she says, there is no mistake about. My mother
felt almost certain that the time was 10.50, but as it occurred so long ago
she is not likely to have it on record ; therefore she thinks that the medical
official report would be the most reliable."

The percipients here are described as having been in great anxiety.
We have seen grounds for rejecting from the telepathic evidence
instances where this condition has existed on the part of a single
percipient (Vol. I., pp. 508-9) ; but where two are affected the case is
different. For, even if the experience of one was purely subjective
in origin, it would be extravagant to suppose that of the other to have
taken place by accident at the same moment ; so that there would at
least have been a " psychical " phenomenon — a transferred hallucina-
tion. But in the present instance there is some reason for going
beyond this, and supposing a telepathic origin to the experience.
For the sort of sound heard is scarcely a likely one for anxiety to
suggest ; and, moreover, in no case could the hypothesis of a joint
rapport of the agent with two percipients seem more in place than
where the two are his near relatives, whose minds are already similarly
and fully occupied with him.

I will add a couple of specimens of the non-vocal type. In the
first, the hallucination presents a curiously close connection with the
probable idea of the agent at the moment. The account is from Mrs.

Paget, of Farnham, Surrey.

"June 5th, 1884.

(343) " A man-servant, who had lived with us from a child, and who
was a real friend, fell into a consumption, and thinking that the climate

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES, 231

of Ventnor might prolong his life for some months, we sent him to St.
Catharine's Home in September, 1 880. On the 8th of October, I received
a letter from the Sister-in-charge, saying that Arthur Dunn was decidedly
worse, but that the doctor thought there was no immediate danger, and
therefore she did not think I need go to Yentnor at once. I therefore
wrote to say I would be there on the following Monday, when I hoped to
be able to stay with him to the last. That morning I said to my girls,
' I really must remember to speak to the new servant about putting out
the gas upstairs at half-past 10, for since poor Arthur left us, it has not
been put out punctually, and even som'e nights the burner close to my
bedroom and my eldest girl's dressing-room has been alight all night.'

" That same evening was very warm, and my daughter and myself both
left our doors open, in order to be able to talk after we went upstairs (the
gas-burner being close to our rooms). Whilst we were both saying our
prayers, the clock struck half-past 10, and at that moment we heard a
man's heavy step along the passage, which stopped at the gas-burner, and
then we heard the footsteps retiring. Almost at the same moment my
daughter and myself came to our respective doors and exclaimed, ' Why,
the man did not put out the gas after all. How like his step sounded to
poor Arthur's heavy tread.'

" The next morning I received a telegram from the Sister-in-charge at
St. Catharine's Home, saying, ' All was over last night.' I went down to
Ventnor at once to make arrangements, and in telling Sister Mary Martha
how I grieved that I had not started for Ventnor before, she remarked,
' We did not think there was immediate danger, and his mind was
wandering so much that day that he was hardly conscious. It was curious
to see what form his wandering took, for, after he had been very silent
for some hours, the clock struck half -past 10, when he raised himself in
bed and said distinctly, ' The clock has struck, I must go and put out the
gas,' and fell back and died immediately.

" I ought to mention that punctuality had been a perfect mania with
him. He was never, as far as I can remember, three minutes late for any-
thing he was ordered to do, and he was most devotedly attached to us and
our home. " FRANCES PAGET."

Miss Paget (now Mrs. P. Hanham) wrote as follows, on June 11, 1884: —

" I can only most emphatically confirm my mother's statement. I
distinctly heard the ' footsteps ' as described by her, and it happened at
half-past 10 at night, the exact time, as we heard afterwards, that our
poor man-servant died. I may mention that I questioned our new man-
servant in the morning as to whether he had not been upstairs on the
previous night ; but it turned out that he had forgotten the orders given
him to turn out the gas, and had not been upstairs. The footsteps, as I
remarked at the time, were exactly similar to those of poor Arthur Dunn,
and you may judge of my surprise when, on my mother's return from the
funeral, she told us about her conversation with the Sister, who was with
him at the last, and his last words having been, ' The clock has struck, I
must go and put out the gas.'

" In answer to your questions : —

(1) "The occurrence happened here, and it was on October 8th, 1880,
as I have since found on referring to a diary.

232 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

(2) " Neither my mother nor myself ever remember to have had any
hallucinations of any sort, before or since. " GERTRUDE F. PAGET."

[The diary, which I have seen, gives the date of the death only. Miss
Paget's meaning was that this was fixed on their minds next day as
having happened on October 8th, on which day — as they could not then
be mistaken in recollecting — the sounds had been heard.]

To a suggestion that the steps might have been those of a heavy-footed
housemaid, Mrs. Paget replied : —

" I can positively affirm that the housemaid did not come upstairs on
the night of my servant's death ; for that point was inquired into at the
time."

The Sister-in-charge at St. Catharine's Home, Ventnor, writes as
follows, on March 6, 1885 :—

"Arthur Dunn died at 10.30 p.m. on the 8th of October, 1880. I
was with him when he died ; he was only with us eight days.

"MATILDA S. S. S. M."

Mrs. Paget's account having been sent to Sister Matilda, she replied as
follows, on March 9, 1885 :—

" Arthur John Dunn was only here eight days before his death. I
nursed him, and was with him when he died on October 8th. I do not
recollect what Mrs. Paget says at all ; all I can remember was that he
was in bed three days ; his breathing was very laboured ; he had a weak
heart ; he was not unconscious at all ; he was a very silent man, and
seldom spoke, except to answer any question asked. Just before he died
he asked me the time ; it was half -past 10 ; his words were : ' What is the
time ? ' I do not think he spoke after. There was nothing about the gas.
He could not hear any clock strike, for there is not one in the ward or
near it. Sister Mary Martha was in charge of the house at the time, and
I had the nursing of the men."

Sister Mary Martha writes from St. Margaret's, East Grinstead, on
March 17, 1885 :—

" I regret that I am quite unable to recall any particulars of Arthur
Dunn's death. I remember the young man perfectly well ; he was at the
Home only about eight days, and died almost suddenly. He suffered from
heart disease as well as consumption. He was a very nice fellow, and we
all liked him much. Mrs. Paget, I remember, spoke in the highest terms
of him. My impression is that his end was very sudden — too much so for
any last words. « SISTER MARY MARTHA."

[It will be observed that there are two discrepancies between Mrs.
Paget's and the Sisters' account. The point as to the way in which the
man ascertained the time — whether by hearing the clock strike or by in
quiry of the Sister — is not in itself important : the point about his
mention of the gas, though not vital, has more importance. I have
thoroughly talked over the matter with Mrs. Paget and her daughter.
Mrs. Paget is quite clear in her recollection of Sister Mary Martha's
statement ; but she does not recollect having heard or realised who it was to
whom the man made the remark. The daughter is equally clear about her
mother's mention of this detail at the time. Had there been a consider-

xvin.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 233

able interval between Mrs. Paget's conversation with the Sister and her
narration of it to someone else, it would not be hard to suppose that the
incident of the man's asking the hour, combined with her own and her
daughter's experience at that exact time, had gradually led to her
imagining the crowning detail of his mentioning the gas ; but that this
detail, if it was not reported to her, should have got immediately im-
pressed upon her mind as though it had been reported, seems decidedly
less likely than that it has slipped from the memory of the Sisters, for
whom it would have no special interest, since Mrs. Paget did not tell them
what had occurred at home. And there is a further point which tells, I
think, decidedly in favour of this view. On the supposition that the man
made the remark about the gas, it is very easy to see how Mrs. Paget
may have made the mistake about his hearing the clock strike ; for the
remark would become the fact of interest, and the manner in which the
man ascertained the time would retain no significance. If, on the other
hand, the only thing reported to Mrs. Paget had been that the man asked
and was told what the time was, that would have served completely to
stamp the coincidence, and to suggest the direction of the man's thoughts,
and would thus have given a quite sufficient impressiveness and complete-
ness to the story. Briefly, the introduction of the clock, on the first
hypothesis, seems more easily comprehensible than the introduction of the
gas, on the second.

Mrs. Paget showed me the scene of the incident. The gas burner
is at the end of a long passage, just outside her and her daughter's
rooms. The house is a very quiet one, standing in grounds far back
from the road ; and it is difficult to imagine any sort of real sound
that could possibly have been mistaken for heavy steps twice traversing
the length of the passage, the doors of both hearers (it will be remembered)
being open. Mrs. Paget says, moreover, that Arthur Dunn's tread was
decidedly peculiar. That the steps were not those of the man-servant for
the time being was practically proved (apart from his own assertion next
day) by the fact that the gas was not turned off; for he could have no
possible duty in that corner of the house at night, except to turn it off ;
and there was no other man in the house. Mrs. Paget and her daughter
both confirmed the statement that they have had no other hallucinations.
They are far from being credulous or superstitious witnesses ; but the
strangeness of this incident made an extremely strong impression upon
them.]

.In the next case the coincidence seems again to have been close
to within a very few minutes ; but the form which the hallucination
(if it was one) took had no special connection with anything that we
can conceive to have been present to the agent's mind. Bells are,
however, a not uncommon form of purely subjective impression.1 And
if the principle of telepathic hallucinations be granted, one would
naturally expect that the rudimentary specimens of that class —
specimens which do not suggest any conscious idea of the agent, but

1 See Vol. i., p. 503, and above, p. 127, note.

234 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

are projected, as it were, blindly under the telepathic impulse — should
follow the ordinary lines of hallucinations in general. The account is
from the Misses Lafone, of Hanworth Park, Feltham.

"January, 1884.

(344) " My sister and I were both much astonished at hearing our church
bell ring in a loud and hurried manner, at a few minutes before 7.30, one
evening, when we knew no service was to take place. Our church is
within 5 minutes' walk across fields, and all the neighbouring churches a
mile or more off. We talked together of the occurrence, and mentioned it
at dinner, but did not connect it with anyone in particular. The next day
we heard an aunt had died at 7.20 the evening before, but did not connect
the two facts until a few days afterwards, when we made inquiries, and
found no one had been in the church at the time we imagined the bell to
be ringing. This took place 19th September, 1883. No one else in the
house heard the bell."

The Times obituary confirms Sept. 19, 1883, as the date of death.

In answer to inquiries, Miss Lafone adds : —

" There was no particular bond of sympathy between my aunt and my
sister and myself, although we knew her very well. We were aware she
was seriously ill, but being very much occupied with another subject
the evening she died, had hardly thought of her at all. We are not
conscious of ever before experiencing ' auditory hallucinations.'

"MARY E. LAFONE."
"March 18th, 1884.

" My sister's account of the bells we heard is perfectly correct. We
were dressing for dinner at 7.30, in different rooms, when I was attracted
by the sound of the bells, as I supposed from our church, ringing in a most
eccentric way, and having called to my sister found that she heard them
too. We discussed the possibility of someone being shut in, as there was
no service, and the sounds were too irregular and too quick to be tolling for
a death. We mentioned the subject downstairs, and then forgot it, until
having heard the following day that our aunt had died at 7.20, just at the
time we were listening to the bells. We made inquiries as to whether
anyone had been in the church at the time, but could not find that anyone
had, or that the bells were heard by anyone besides ourselves.

"JENNY LAFONE."

[I have been to Hanworth, and realised the relation of the bouse to the
village church, and also to Feltham Church. There seems to be no
possibility whatever that the sound heard could have proceeded from the
latter, or any more distant edifice. Feltham Church lies more than
a mile to the back of the house ; the intervening space is thickly clothed
with trees ; and the Misses Lafone's windows look out in the directly
opposite direction. Miss Lafone does not recall that she has ever so much
as heard the Feltham bell, even faintly ; whereas the sounds on this
occasion appeared louder even than those which the neighbouring church-
bell usually produced. It is extremely unlikely that this neighbouring
bell should have been rung at this time (on a week-day evening when there
is never any service), and in this eccentric way ; and it is even more

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 235

unlikely that, if so rung, it should have been unobserved by others. The
result of my visit is that I find it all but impossible to doubt that the case
was one of collective hallucination — whether connected with the death of
the aunt or not is of course a different question.]

I now come to cases where the sense of sight was involved. And
I may begin with a few specimens where the experiences of the
several percipients were either not exactly simultaneous or not
exactly similar, and where, therefore, the theory that they were
severally derived from the agent receives some slight support. (Com-
pare in this respect the auditory case, No. 36.)

In the following example the experience of the second percipient
included an auditory as well as a visual impression, and was,
moreover, separated by an interval of 3 hours from that of the
first. The narrator is Mrs. Cox, who wrote from Summer Hill,

Queenstown, Ireland.

" December 26th, 1883.

(345) " On the night of the 21st August, 1869, between the hours of
8 and 9 o'clock, I was sitting in my bedroom in my mother's house at
Devonport, my nephew, a boy aged seven years, being in bed in the next
room, when I was startled by his suddenly running into my room, and
exclaiming in a frightened tone, ' Oh, auntie, I have just seen my father
walking around my bed.' I replied, ' Nonsense, you must have been
dreaming.' He said, ' No, I have not,' and refused to return to the room.
Finding that I was unable to persuade him to go back, I put him in my
own bed. Between 10 and 111 myself retired to rest. I think about
an hour afterwards, on looking towards the fireplace, I distinctly saw, to
my astonishment, the form of my brother seated in a chair, and what
particularly struck me was the deathly pallor of his face. (My nephew
was at this time fast asleep.) I was so frightened, knowing that at this
time my brother was in Hong Kong, China, that I put my head under the
bed clothes. Soon after this I plainly heard his voice calling me by
name ; my name was repeated three times. The next time I looked, he
was gone. The following morning I told my mother and sister what had
occurred, and said I should make a note of it, which I did. The next
mail from China brought us the sad intelligence of my brother's death,
which took place on the 21st August, 1869, in the Harbour of Hong
Korig, suddenly, [of heat-apoplexy]. ':" MINNIE Cox."

We have received from the Admiralty an official confirmation of the
date of the death.

In answer to further inquiries, Mr. Cox (at present Secretary to the
Naval Commander-in-Chief at Devonport) wrote : —

" February 21st, 1884. -

" As my wife is too unwell to reply to your letter she has asked me to
state with reference to your question on the subject of the appearance of
her brother to her, that : —

" As she has no note now in her possession, and as her mother is

236 COLLECTIVE CASES, [CHAP.

dead, she cannot be positive as to the hour at which her brother died.
The circumstance happened about 15 years ago — both the persons she
mentioned it to are dead. All that she can now state positively is that
she now believes it must have been after midnight when she saw the ap-
pearance, but at the same time she is quite certain that her little nephew
came into her room before midnight. She is sure that afterwards, when
the news came from China, the time corresponded, but has nothing to
prove it. I fear that she has not sufficient evidence, or in fact any
evidence now ; but it is an old story she has often told me, and I have not
the slightest doubt that she did see the appearance. " JAMES Cox."

In conversation Mrs. Cox told me that she was quite certain of having
put down the date, and compared it with the date in the letter. She has
never had the slightest hallucination on any other occasion. The child
was not in the least given to frights, and had no dread of the dark.

[If the time either of Mrs. Cox's or of her nephew's impression
coincided with that of the death, the first date in the account is of course
given wrongly, as 9 p.m. in England would correspond with about 5 a.m.
of the next day at Hong Kong. If the first date is right, then the per-
cipients' experiences must have followed the death by some hours. It
might be suggested that Mrs. Cox's experience was due to suggestion
from her nephew. But it is scarcely probable that a person who has no
tendency to hallucinations should evolve one from what she took to be the
dream of a frightened child.]

In the next case, the difference between the several impressions
was perhaps rather one of degree than of kind. The account is from
Mr. T. N. Deane, of University Club, 3, Upper Merrion Street,
Dublin, and was procured through the kindness of the Rev. J. N.
Hoare, now vicar of Keswick.

" 1882.

(346) " In the year 1851, on the 4th of June, I was in a large bedroom
of a country house in the County Cork. The windows of the room faced the
River Lee ; both were open. The air was sultry and still ; all the inmates
of the house were out, with the exception of my wife and an intimate
friend (now dead), who were with me in the room. We sat on three chairs
near one of the open windows, and talked on ordinary subjects. The
old-fashioned four-post bed occupied the side of the room to my right, and
the only door (which was open) was on my left. We sat into the twilight,
but there was still sufficient light to recognise each other, and see objects
pretty clearly. A figure approached me from the side of the room occupied
by the large bed, and apparently from the side of it, moved directly
towards me, and placed its hand on my shoulder. It was a female figure,
but I could not recognise the features. I followed it to the lobby, but did
not see it again. I returned to my companions, and asked them had they
seen it. They replied in the affirmative. I said, ' If ever there was a
ghost, that was one.' That evening my mother was seized with fatal illness.
Next morning I got a telegram stating that she was in extremis, and for
hours before was asking for me to be sent for. On receipt of the telegram
I started for Dublin, and was just in time to see my mother before her

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 237

death. The first person I met was Mr. Hoare's father [deceased], to whom
I said, ' My mother will die ! I saw her last night.' " THOS. N. DEANE."

We find from the obituary in the Freeman's Journal that Lady Deane
died on June 5, 1851, at Dublin.

Mrs. Deane writes on March 7, 1883 : —

" I must say I felt the presence more than saw it, and it certainly came
up to where we (three friends) were sitting, All saw it or felt it ; in fact,
it was both, for I could describe it as a misty shadow passing through the
chamber, and went out silently. Of course we did not turn round until
we all three said, ' Was not there some one near the chair who is gone
from the room ? ' Then one of our number got up and inquired had any
one been in, and all were absent from where we were — some downstairs in
other sitting-rooms reading, others in the garden, and the servants at tea
in their kitchen ; then it appeared doubly odd, and it seized hold of one's
mind there had been an apparition or vision. We had been talking of the
lady at the time she appeared to us. " HENRIETTA DEANE."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Deane says, " Neither my wife nor I ever
saw anything of the kind before or since."

Here the vaguer form of Mrs. Deane's impression, as compared
to that of her husband, seems a good example of rudimentary or
arrested development (see p. 73, note).

The following case is one that would not have been included
here, but for the favourable opinion which our colleague, Mr. Richard
Hodgson, formed of the principal witness. The account was written
down by Miss Atkinson, of Park Head, Jesmond Dene, Newcastle-on-
Tyne, and is signed by Mrs. Reed, of 7, Miller's Lane, Byker Hill, New-
castle-on-Tyne, the younger of the two percipients ; the other is dead.

"July, 1884.

(347) "It was at Christmas time. Mr. and Mrs. Adams and their
daughter Annie had been spending the evening with some friends, not far
from home. Annie (a girl of 12 at the time), along with another girl, was
sent home to fetch something that had been forgotten. On entering the
kitchen, Annie said to the other girl, ' See, there's a man sitting by the
fireside.' The other girl said there was nobody there. The two went up-
stairs to get what they had been sent for, when Annie said ' There's the
man again.' x The other girl persisted that there was nobody there.
Having got what was wanted, they returned to the friend's house. On
coming home late at night, Mrs. Adams said to her husband—' There's my
brother standing beside that house ; don't you see him, all in white 1 '
Mr. Adams did not see him. A day or two afterwards she received a
letter to say that her brother was killed down the pit, the night and the
hour corresponding with the time that Annie saw the man (as she said)

1 For the feature of repetition in visual hallucinations, see cases 159, 160, 184, 213,
240, 503, 519, 540. In Vol. i., p. 414, second note, I mentioned an example in my collec-
tion of subjective cases, for which I am now allowed to name Mr. J. Champ, of High
Street, Chelmsford, as my authority. What he saw (after a fatiguing march) was a gro-
tesque, parti-coloured figure, about as wide as high, which appeared on the wall of the
room, disappeared, and re-appeared after an interval of a few minutes.

238 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

sitting by her mother's hearth. Annie had never seen her uncle, as she
had always travelled from place to place with the regiment, and had never
been taken to the colliery village where her mother's family lived.

" This is a correct statement. " ANNIE REED."

We find from the Register of Deaths that Mrs. Reed's uncle was
crushed by a fall of stone in the Washington coal mine on December 29,
1862 ; which confirms the first words of the account.

Miss Atkinson tells us that Mrs. Adams, unlike her husband, was of a
superstitious turn of mind. She adds on July 31, 1884 ; —

" I have been to see Mrs. Reed, but cannot say I have gained much
information. She says that the figure she saw upstairs was the same as
she had seen sitting by the fireside downstairs. She cannot give any
definite information about the girl who was with her, except that her name
was Sophie Arnup, and that she belonged to Norwich, where the incident
occurred. Mrs. Reed does not know whether she is living or dead, or
whether married. Mrs. Reed cannot remember that there were any
differences noted when she and her mother talked about what they had
seen. She mentioned about the man in white sitting by the fireside, as
soon as she reached the friend's house where her mother was, and before
her mother returned. She cannot remember any details about face or
dress, except that the dress was white ; she was too frightened to observe
carefully, and I am glad to find she is too truthful to set her imagination
to work, and fancy she remembers what she does not. This is the only
hallucination that she ever had. " E. E. ATKINSON."

Mr. Hodgson writes in September, 1884 : —

"I have talked with Mr. Adams [now resident at 144, High Street,
Jarrow-on-Tyne], who told me the story as given above. The pit where
the brother was killed was in the Durham district ; the figure was seen
at Norwich. I have also seen Mrs. Reed, who first saw the figure, and
who also told the story as given above. She impressed me as being
exceptionally truthful."

[We might conceive that Mrs. Adams' hallucination was due to
apprehensions caused by her daughter's account. But it will be observed
that there had been nothing in the daughter's account to suggest Mrs.
Adams' brother ; the point therefore that Mrs. Adams mentioned her
brother (which there is no reason to doubt) is important. And even if we
suppose that she was given to apprehensions about this relative, which may
have taken a superstitious colour, this would not explain the other hal-
lucination, unique in her daughter's experience, occurring on the same
evening. That the impressions were hallucinations and not illusions, is
strongly indicated by the fact that neither of them was shared by a
second person whose attention was drawn to the appearance (p. 105,
second note).]

In the remaining visual cases, the impression seems to have been
distinct and identical to all the percipients. I will begin with a case
where it is a question whether a distant agent was or was not the
source of the phenomenon ; but where the flashing of the hallucina-
tion from one of the percipients to the other seems specially well

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 239

illustrated, since the figure which appeared was one which the
second percipient had never seen in the flesh. The account is first-
hand, though written in the third person. It is from Mrs. Elgee,
of 18, Woburn Eoad, Bedford.

"March 1st, 1885.

(348) "In the month of November, 1864, being detained in Cairo, on
my way out to India, the following curious circumstance occurred to me : —

" Owing to an unusual influx of travellers, I, with the young lady under
my charge (whom we will call D.) and some other passengers of the outward-
bound mail to India, had to take up our abode in a somewhat unfrequented
hotel. The room shared by Miss D. and myself was large, lofty, and
gloomy ; the furniture of the scantiest, consisting of two small beds,
place'd nearly in the middle of the room and not touching the walls at
all, two or three rush-bottomed chairs, a very small washing-stand, and a
large old-fashioned sofa of the settee-sort, which was placed against one-
half of the large folding-doors which gave entrance to the room. This
settee was far too heavy to be removed, unless by two or three people.
The other half of the door was used for entrance, and faced the two beds.
Feeling rather desolate and strange, and Miss D. being a nervous person,
I locked the door, and, taking out the key, put it under my pillow ; but
on Miss D. remarking that there might be a duplicate which could open
the door from outside, I put a chair against the door, with my travelling-
bag on it, so arranged that, on any pressure outside, one or both must fall
on the bare floor, and make noise enough to rouse me. We then
proceeded to retire to bed, the one I had chosen being near the only
window in the room, which opened with two glazed doors, almost to the
floor. These doors, on account of the heat, I left open, first assuring
myself that no communication from the outside could be obtained. The
window led on to a small balcony, which was isolated, and was three
stories above the ground.

" I suddenly woke from a sound sleep with the impression that
somebody had called me, and, sitting up in bed, to my unbounded
astonishment, by the clear light of early dawn coming in through the
large window before-mentioned, I beheld the figure of an old and very
valued friend whom I knew to be in England. He appeared as if most
eager to speak to me, and I addressed him with, ' Good gracious ! how
did you come here? ' So clear was the figure, that I noted every detail
of his dress, even to three onyx shirt studs which he always wore. He
seemed to come a step nearer to me, when he suddenly pointed across the
room, and on my looking round, I saw Miss D. sitting up in her bed,
gazing at the figure with every expression of terror. On looking back,
my friend seemed to shake his head, and retreated step by step, slowly,
till he seemed to sink through that portion of the door where the settee
stood. I never knew what happened to me after this ; but my next
remembrance is of bright sunshine pouring through the window. Gradually
the remembrance of what had happened came back to me, and the question
arose in my mind, had I been dreaming, or had I seen a visitant from
another world ? — the bodily presence of my friend being utterly impossible.

240 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

Remembering that Miss D. had seemed aware of the figure as well as
myself, I determined to allow the test of my dream or vision to be
whatever she said to me upon the subject, I intending to say nothing to
her unless she spoke to me. As she seemed still asleep, I got out of bed,
examined the door carefully, and found the chair and my bag untouched,
and the key under my pillow ; the settee had not been touched, nor had
that portion of the door against which it was placed any appearance of
being opened for years.

" Presently, on Miss D. waking up, she looked about the room, and,
noticing the chair and bag, made some remark as to their not having
been much use. I said, ' What do you mean ? ' and then she said,
' Why, that man who was in the room this morning must have got
in somehow.' She then proceeded to describe to me exactly what I
myself had seen. Without giving any satisfactory answer as to what I
had seen, I made her rather angry by affecting to treat the matter as a
fancy on her part, and showed her the key still under my pillow, and the
chair and bag untouched. I then asked her, if she was so sure that she
had seen somebody in the room, did not she know who it was 1 ' No,'
said she, ' I have never seen him before, nor anyone like him.' I said,
'Have you ever seen a photograph of him ?' She said, ' No.' This lady
never was told what 1 saw, and yet described exactly to a third person
what we both had seen.

"Of course, I was under the impression my friend was dead. Such,
however, was not the case ; and I met him some four years later,
when, without telling him anything of my experience in Cairo, I asked
him, in a joking way, could he remember what he was doing on a
certain night in November, 1864. 'Well,' he said, 'you require me to
have a good memory ; ' but after a little reflection he replied, ' Why that
was the time I was so harassed with trying to decide for or against the
appointment which was offered me, and I so much wished you could have
been with me to talk the matter over. I sat over the fire quite late,
trying to think what you would have advised me to do.' A little cross-
questioning and comparing of dates brought out the curious fact that,
allowing for the difference of time between England and Cairo, his
meditations over the fire and my experience were simultaneous. Having
told him the circumstances above narrated, I asked him had he been aware
of any peculiar or unusual sensation. He said none, only that he had
wanted to see me very much.

" E. H. ELGEB."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Elgee says : —

" I fear it is quite impossible to get any information from Miss D.
She married soon after we reached India, and I never met her since, nor
do I know where she is, if alive. I quite understand the value of her
corroboration; and at the time she told the whole circumstance to a fellow-
traveller, who repeated it to me, and her story and mine agreed in every
particular, save that to her the visitant was a complete stranger ; and her
tale was quite unbiassed by mine, as I always treated hers as a fancy, and
never acknowledged I had been aware of anything unusual having taken
place in our room at Cairo. I never have seen, or fancied I saw, any one
before or since.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 241

" My visitant, also, is dead, or he would, I know, have added his
testimony, small as it was, to mine. He was a very calm, quiet, clever,
scientific man, not given to vain fancies on any subject, and certainly was
not aware of any desire of appearing to me."

[This seems at any rate an interesting example of collective hallucina-
tion ; though as regards its supposed origination in the thoughts of Mrs.
Elgee's friend in England, one may doubt whether, after a lapse of 4 years,
complete certainty as to the identity of dates was attainable. If there
has been an error on this point, the case would properly belong to the
preceding section.]

The next account (which has been very slightly condensed) was
written down for us, in 1883, by the late Miss Katherine M. Weld,
one of the two percipients, at the request of Mr. James Britten, of
Isleworth. It proves to be identical with a former account, as to
which Miss Weld wrote to Mr. Wilfrid Ward, of Sherborne House,
Basingstoke, on May 19, 1883, as follows : —

" The account was written about 15 years ago ; it was an account
which appeared in a book and in the newspapers at that time, and which
I, at the request of friends, revised and corrected. I believe every word
of the account to be perfectly true, as such things become impressed on
one's mind ; but at the same time it must be remembered that the account
was not written at the time, but many years afterwards. Therefore I can
only say that as far as I remember every detail is exact."

" The Lodge, Lymington.

(349) " Philip Weld was the youngest son of Mr. James Weld, of
Archers Lodge, near Southampton, and a nephew of the late Cardinal Weld.
He was sent by his father, in 1842, to St. Edmund's College, near Ware, in
Hertfordshire, for his education. He was a well conducted, amiable boy,
and much beloved by his masters and fellow-students. In the afternoon of
April 16th, 1845, Philip, accompanied by one of the masters and some of
his companions, went to boat on the river, which was a sport he enjoyed
much. When one of the masters remarked that it was time to return to
the college, Philip begged to have one row more ; the master consented
and they rowed to the accustomed turning point. On arriving there, in
turning the boat, Philip accidentally fell out into a very deep part of the
river, and, notwithstanding every effort that was made to save him, was
drowned.

" His corpse was brought back to the college, and the Very Rev. Dr.
Cox (the president) was immensely shocked and grieved. He made up
his mind to go himself to Mr. Weld, at Southampton. He set off the
same afternoon, and passing through London, reached Southampton the
next day, and drove from thence to Archers Lodge, the residence of Mr..
Weld ; but before entering the grounds he saw Mr. Weld at a short
distance from his gate, walking towards the town. Dr. Cox immediately
stopped the carriage, alighted, and was about to address Mr. Weld, when
he prevented him by saying : —

" ' You need not say one word, for I know that Philip is dead.

VOL. II. K

242 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

Yesterday afternoon I was walking with my daughter, Katherine, and we
suddenly saw him. He was standing on the path, on the opposite side of
the turnpike road, between two persons, one of whom was a youth dressed
in a black robe. My daughter was the first to perceive them and
exclaimed, " Oh, papa ! did you ever see anything so like Philip as that is ? "
" Like him," I answered, " why it is he." Strange to say, my daughter
thought nothing of the circumstance, beyond that we had seen an extra-
ordinary likeness of her brother. We walked on towards these three
figures. Philip was looking, with a smiling, happy expression of counte-
nance, at the young man in a black robe, who was shorter than
himself. Suddenly they all seemed to me to have vanished ; I saw nothing
but a countryman, whom I had before seen through the three figures,
which gave me the impression that they were spirits. I, however, said
nothing to anyone, as I was fearful of alarming my wife. I looked
out anxiously for the post the following morning. To my delight, no letter
came. I forgot that letters from Ware came in the afternoon, and my
fears were quieted, and I thought no more of the extraordinary circum-
stance until I saw you in the carriage outside my gate. Then everything
returned to my mind, and I could not feel a doubt that you came to tell
me of the death of my dear boy.'

" The reader may imagine how inexpressibly astonished Dr. Cox was
at these words. He asked Mr. Weld if he had ever before seen the young
man in the black robe, at whom Philip was looking with such a happy
smile. Mr. Weld answered that he had never before seen him, but
that his countenance was so indelibly "impressed on his mind that he
was certain he should know him at once anywhere. Dr. Cox then
related to the afflicted father all the circumstances of his son's death,
which had taken place at the very hour in which he appeared to his father
and sister. Mr. Weld went to the funeral of his son, and as he left the
church, after the sad ceremony, looked round to see if any of the religious
at all resembled the young man he had seen with Philip, but he could not
trace the slightest likeness in any of them. About four months after, he
and his family paid a visit to his brother, Mr. George Weld, at Seagram
Hall, in Lancashire. One day he walked with his daughter Katherine to
the neighbouring village of Chipping, and after attending a service at the
church called on the priest. It was a little time before the rev. father
was at leisure to come to them, and they amused themselves meantime by
examining the prints hanging on the walls of the room. Suddenly Mr.
Weld stopped before a picture which had no name, that you could see,
written under it (as the frame covered the bottom), and exclaimed ' Tliat is
the person whom I saw with Philip ; I do not know whose likeness this print
is, but I am certain that it was that person whom I saw with Philip.'
The priest entered the room a few moments afterwards, and was im-
mediately questioned by Mr. Weld concerning the print. He answered
that it was a print of St. Stanislaus Kostka, and supposed to be a very
good likeness of the young saint.

" Mr. Weld was much moved at hearing this ; for St. Stanislaus was a
Jesuit, who died when quite young, and Mr. Weld's father having been a
great benefactor to that Order, his family were supposed to be under the
particular protection of the Jesuit saints ; also, Philip had been led of late,
by various circumstances, to a particular devotion to St. Stanislaus.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 243

Moreover, St. Stanislaus is supposed to be the special advocate of drowned
men, as is mentioned in his life. The rev. father instantly presented the
picture to Mr. Weld, who, of course, received it with the greatest
veneration, and kept it until his death. His wife valued it equally, and
at her death it passed into the possession of the daughter [the narrator],
who saw the apparition at the same time he did, and it is now in her
possession."

In answer to some questions put by Mr. Ward, Miss Weld wrote on
June 20th, 1883 :—

" I will repeat the questions you ask, to make the answers more clear.

"'Did you as well as your father, think the disappearance strange?' —
No ; I thought no more about it.

" ' Did your father, before Dr. Cox spoke to him, look upon the
apparition as significant of some mishap to his son ?' — Yes ; he thought
much about it, and was very anxious for the arrival of the letters the next
morning ; but he did not speak of the matter until afterwards. He had
frightened my mother so much on a former occasion that he had promised
never to speak of such things again."

Miss Weld adds in another letter : —

" When I saw Philip, I thought no more of it than one does in seeing
a great and unexpected likeness in a stranger to some absent friend. The
matter passed out of my mind so completely that I never felt a sensation of
uneasiness. I did not remember the circumstance until the arrival of
Dr. Cox, and the announcement of my brother's death. I saw that two
persons were walking with the young lad who so closely resembled my
brother. He looked happy and smiling ; but I neither remarked their
countenance nor dress ; consequently I did not recognise the print in the
parlour of the priest."

In answer to an inquiry as to whether this was her only experience of
a sensory hallucination, Miss Weld adds : " I never before or since the
event have seen anything from the other world."1

The apparition of St. Stanislaus is quite consistent with the tele-
pathic hypothesis, since we can conceive that the idea of his favourite
saint may have been actually present to the mind of the drowning
boy ; but we have no explanation of the third phantasmal figure.
This, from its irrelevance, is an unlikely feature to have crept into

1 See p. 48, note.

The following version of the same incident, which we have received from a Fellow
of the Royal College of Physicians, is useful as illustrating the slight inaccuracies which
may creep into a narrative, without the least affecting the essential point : —

" I was mentioning this [i.e., a similar case] to Baron French, or rather we were talk-
ing over the incidents connected with it, when he told me of a strange occurrence which
happened at the school where he was, near Ware, in England, a Catholic college, — presi-
dent, a Dr. Cox. There was a boy there of the name of Weld, a very well-known Catholic
family. This boy was accidentally drowned. The father and mother were at the time at
Southampton, and on the_ day in question were walking on the quay near the shipping.
They suddenly saw the said boy approaching, and hurried to meet him, but immediately
he appeared to fade away, so that they could see the masts of the ships, and through what
had seemed to be his body. The next day, or the day following, Dr. Cox called on them,
when Mr. Weld said, ' I know why you are here, it is to tell me that my son is dead. I
saw him yesterday, and knew then that he had departed.' "

VOL. II. K 2

244 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

the memory, if not really observed ; but it also makes the hypothesis
of mistaken identity less improbable than it would otherwise be. As
against that hypothesis we have the fact that the figures were seen in
daylight, only a few yards off; that their disappearance seems to
have been strangely sudden ; and that, if the narrator's memory may
be trusted as to Mr. Weld's spontaneous recognition of the picture,
the mistake on his part would have been a double one. Moreover
it must be observed that even if the case was one of mistaken
identity — of illusion and not hallucination — the coincidence remains
to be accounted for. If we suppose — as according to the account I
think we may — that the eyes of the two percipients were indepen-
dently deluded, and that Mr. Weld's delusion was not merely
conjured up by his daughter's remark, we cannot ignore the
improbability of two persons making a mistake of the sort on the
very afternoon that the relative whom they seem to see is drowned.
How prodigious this improbability is may be realised from a simple
computation. Let us suppose — surely a liberal estimate — that it is
a common thing, which one may suppose to have happened to each of
the percipients, to make in the course of life 50 equally remarkable
mistakes of identity, in an equally" good light and when equally
near to the figure observed ; and also that the probability that one
particular relative of most familiar aspect will be the subject of the
mistake on any one of these occasions amounts to 3*5 — which is
again an extravagant allowance. Let us further suppose that the
adult life of each percipient amounted to 35 years, or 12,775 days.
Then, for each percipient, the probability of making one of the
mistakes of identity on the particular day that the subject of the
mistake dies is ^0^775 ; and the probability of the supposed combi-
nation of coincident mistakes is siW . In other words, the odds
against the occurrence by accident of the incident above related are
more than 26 millions to 1. If, therefore, the experiences were
illusions, they may fairly be supposed to have been telepathic
illusions (see pp. 62-3.)

We owe the next account in the first instance to Mrs. Willink, of
Lindale Parsonage, Grange-over-Sands. The three first-hand witnesses
all appear to be persons of good sense and of some education. Mrs.
Willink writes, on Sept. 9, 1884 :—

(350) " One night (Friday) my nurse, Jane, came to tell me that they
had been startled by seeing a ghastly face at the kitchen window. The
servants had been annoyed for some time previously by some young men

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 245

coming to the kitchen window, and making a noise on the glass, and
trying to look in. The flower bed under the window had been freshly dug
up and tidied, and they were hoping the visits had ceased. The dog,
whose kennel was close to the window, and who had been put on a long
chain to keep away these visitors, began to howl, and Helen (now Mrs.
Kobinson), who was sitting so as to see through the edge of the blind,
looked up, and seeing a ghastly face, which she recognised as Mrs.
Robinson's, told the others, who got up and drew the blind on one side,
and so saw the face distinctly. Their account was that it gradually faded
away below the bottom of the window. Jane and Aggie then went to the
door, but though the dog continued howling (as he always does when a
death in the village takes place), they could see nothing.

" I doubt the accuracy of the statement that the apparition looked at
Helen rather than at the others ; she sat where she could see through the
space between the blind and the edge of the window, so naturally saw it first.
Jane had never seen Mrs. Robinson, but some time after, on looking through
a photograph-book in the village, she recognised the face, and was then
told to whom it belonged. When she told me on the Friday evening of
what they had seen, I rather pooh-poohed the story, as I found that the
dog's howling was beginning to make them always nervous ; and it was not
until after service on Sunday that I was told how Mrs. Robinson had been
persuaded to go to Leeds to the hospital there, and to undergo an opera-
tion, under which she died on Friday afternoon, I think, between 2 and 3.
The appearance would be between 8 and 9. Mrs. Robinson had been
servant to the clergyman here before she married ; she had been away
from the village some time before her death ; was always an invalid, but
none of us knew of her being more ill than usual.

"MARGARET WILLINK."

We learn from the clerk at Finsthwaite, where Mrs. Robinson was
buried, that she died at the Leeds Infirmary on March 25th, 1882, and
a neighbour thinks that the hour was between 8 and 9 in the morning.
Friday was the 24th, not the 25th ; and the coincidence was thus not so
close as Mrs. Willink supposes ; but the interval probably did not exceed
12 hours.

Mary Jane Farrand says : —

" It was a Friday evening, of the exact time I am not sure, but it was
between half-past 8 and 9 o'clock. The other two maids, with myself,
were sitting at supper in the kitchen, close to the window, when we all
became conscious of being watched by a woman from the outside, whom
the other two immediately recognised as a person whom they both knew
as Mrs. Robinson. Before her marriage, she lived at the parsonage for
some time as housemaid. She looked intently upon each one, and then
turned her face quite to the cook, looking slightly reproachful, then
pleadingly. They asked one of the other where she could be staying, and
they said it was strange for her to be out (as it rained heavily) without
her bonnet. One was just about to go and ask her in, when we saw a
great change come over the face, and it looked like that of a corpse, then
disappeared altogether. I never saw the person previously, or remember
ever hearing of her, however indirectly. The following Sunday morning I
heard that she was dead from Mrs. Willink. The cook, whom we called

246 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

Nell, was married to John Robinson about two years afterwards. As we
sat at the table I had such an impression of the face, eyes, and front of the
hair as to be able to recognise the photograph a few months afterwards,
without the least trouble, or being told. " MARY JANE FARE AND."

A. Nicholson (now Mrs. Capstick, of Silverdale, Carnforth,) writes to
Mary Jane Farrand, on September 4th, 1884 : —

" Woodwell.

"In answer to your letter about the face at the window, I cannot
remember much about it, except that we were sitting at supper, and Nell
happened to look up at the window, and said some one was looking in, then
told us to come and look. It was like the face of a skeleton, and we
looked, and it was a very thin face, with large staring eyes. We still
thought it was some one till you and I went to the door, but could see
nothing. Nell was in the kitchen, and it never moved, but was still there
when we got back. It seemed to gradually fade out of sight. I don't
remember who passed the remark that it was like Mrs. Robinson.

" A. NICHOLSON."

In conversation, Mrs. Capstick stated that she has never had any other
experience of a hallucination.

Mrs. Willink writes, on September 18th, 1884 : —

" In answer to your question as to when the servants told me it was
Mrs. Robinson's face they saw, as far as I recollect it was that same
evening. Helen knew (as we all did) that Mrs. Robinson was ill, and had
been so for years with an internal complaint, from which she never could
recover ; but she did not know that she was any worse than she had been
before she left the village some months before.

" They went out next morning to look for footmarks on the flower bed,
which would have been disturbed by any one standing at the window, but
there were no traces of any."

In answer to inquiries, Mary Jane Farrand writes, on September
24th, 1884:—

" When I recognised Mrs. Robinson's photograph I was staying at
Arnside with Mrs. Willink's children, and went to visit a person who had
lived near Lindale and had not long been married, and she it was who when
showing me the different things in her house, quite by chance took up her
album, and showed me the photos of her friends, amongst them Mrs. Robin-
son. I cannot quite remember whether or not I told her that I recognised
the face ; for it seems so long ago to remember each fact, and I should not
like to assert what I did not feel confident about, but you certainly may
write to her to ask her.

" Never before had I seen anything of the kind, although I had heard
of similar events, but was greatly wanting in faith with regard to such
things happening, and thought it but a fancy in others, until I saw Mrs.
Robinson [i.e., the photograph]."

She mentions, however, that she has had two subjective hallucinations,
which fell within a few days of one another — one representing Mrs. Willink,
and the other a fellow-servant.

Mrs. Jackson Thompson, of Ashmeadow Lodge, Arnside, Grange-over-
Sands, writes, in February, 1886 : —

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 247

" The only remark I remember Mary Jane Farrand making on the
late Mrs. John Robinson's photograph was that it resembled the face
which appeared at the Lindale Parsonage kitchen window.

" CHARLOTTE THOMPSON."

[The evidence of " Nell " (now Mrs. Robinson), the third witness, will
be found in the " Additions and Corrections " at the beginning of this
volume.]

The next account is from Mrs. Bennett, of Edward Street, Stone.

" March, 1882.

(351) "My daughter, Annie, and I had been drinking tea with the late
Mrs. Smith and Miss Moore, and talking about their brother Preston being
very ill and not expected to recover, and were returning home in the
evening, when between the little wicket which opens out of the Vicarage
field and Mrs. Newbold's house we met the identical man in face, form, and
figure, dressed as he was always wont ; slouched hat, old frock coat, open
in front, knee-breeches and gaiters, with a long stick. He passed so near
us that we shrank aside to make way for him. As soon as we got to Mrs.
Newbold's she exclaimed, ' So Preston Moore is dead ! ' when we both
answered in a breath, ' Oh, no, we have just seen him ! '

" We found, in fact, that he had died about half an hour before he
appeared to us. " J. BENNETT."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Bennett adds, on Dec. 19, 1883 : —

" We cannot call to mind anyone at all resembling the individual in
question ; his appearance, dress and gait were utterly unlike anyone else
residing in or about the neighbourhood."

We learn from the Rev. A. J. Wright, Yicar of Stone, that the death
occurred on April 13th, 1860.

The Rev. Samuel Plant writes to us from Weston Vicarage, Stafford : —

"July 8th, 1885.

" I know very well the lady who, with her daughter, saw the
apparition of Moore on the day of his death, and I have every reason to
believe that she would not deviate from the truth in any respect. I have
several times heard her account of it."

Mrs. Sidgwick writes, on December 17, 1883 : —

" This afternoon Professor Sidgwick and I called on Mrs. Bennett. She
told us the story as in her letter, and her daughter, afterwards called in,
confirmed it. They do not remember when it happened, probably 12 or
more years ago. She remembers distinctly, and so does her daughter, that
it was in the summer, and that it was light enough to see things quite dis-
tinctly— though they are not sure of the hour.1 They had been having tea
with Mrs. Smith (Preston Moore's sister, a farmer's widow, retired and
with means), and were on their way to call on Mrs. Newbold, now dead.
About 3 yards from Mrs. Newbold's gate they saw Preston Moor^
coming towards them ; they came round a slight bend in the road, and saw
him first (Mrs. Bennett said), about the distance across Edward Street
from them. He and they were both walking on the road close to the

1 This statement is not incompatible with the fact that the season was really the
middle of April ; but it will be seen that the " 12 or more years " are really more than 23.

248 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

causeway, and they got on to the causeway and let him pass. He did not
greet them in any way, but though he did generally touch his hat, and
say ' Good-day,' he did not then. His not doing so did not seem to them
odd ; the only thing that did was that a man who they had just heard
was not expected to recover should be out at all. Mrs. Bennett has often
wondered since that she did not turn her head to look after him, but she
did not ; and they do not remember saying anything to each other about
him, during the few seconds that elapsed before .they got to Mrs. New-
bold's door. It was a natural enough place to meet him. There is no
doubt that they both saw him, and that neither doubted at the time that
what they saw was Preston Moore in the flesh. They say he was a
peculiar-looking man — very plain, and with an eye chronically inflamed ;
wore habitually a white hat on one side of his head, a loose shabby long
coat, open down the front, and carried a long, hooked, heavy stick ; and
all these marks they seem to recognise him by. They took no particular
interest in him, just knew him. -There was something forbidding about
him, and he was very odd ; in fact I suppose mad at times. The people
called him ' moonstruck ;•' his sister, Miss Moore, was odd too. He seems
to have had a sort of interest in Mrs. Bennett, for once he brought her
pansies, stolen from a neighbouring gentleman's garden, and another time
cauliflowers — equally illegitimately acquired. But he used to take stolen
gifts to others in the same way. Both Mrs. and Miss Bennett disclaim
being superstitious or nervous, and neither has had any other visual hallu-
cination. Mrs. Bennett has had an auditory hallucination of music, and
also what may have been a hallucination of raps and noises."

[In this case, we certainly cannot suppose that a purely subjective
hallucination was independently and simultaneously caused in both
percipients by their previous talk about the man, in whom they were not
specially interested. The alternative is, therefore, between telepathy and
mistaken identity. It was remarked in a former case that recollections as
to details of appearance are often untrustworthy, as it is easy to imagine
that one has distinctly seen some familiar figure, when in reality one has
assumed its presence on the strength of the slightest and most general
glance. But this criticism scarcely applies here. Preston Moore was the
last person whom the percipients would at that moment have expected to
meet out of doors ; and they were, therefore, very unlikely to assume that
the figure was he, without looking at him attentively.]

The following case is from Mr. S. S. Falkinburg, of Uniontown,

Ky., U.S.A., decorator and house painter.

"Sept. 12th, 1884.

(352) " The following circumstance is impressed upon my mind in a
manner which will preclude its ever being forgotten by me or the members
of my family interested. My little son, Arthur, who was then five years
old, and the pet of his grandpapa, was playing on the floor, when I entered
the house a quarter to 7 o'clock, Friday evening, July llth, 1879. I was
very tired, having been receiving and paying for staves all day, and it
being an exceedingly sultry. evening, I lay down by Artie on the carpet,
and entered into conversation with my wife — not, however, in regard to
my parents. Artie, as usually was the case, came and lay down with his
little head upon my left arm, when all at once he exclaimed, ' Papa !

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 249

papa ! Grandpa ! ' I cast my eyes towards the ceiling, or opened my eyes,
I am not sure which, when, between me and the joists (it was an old-
fashioned log-cabin), I saw the face of my father as plainly as ever I
saw him in my life.1 He appeared to me to be very pale, and looked sad,
as I had seen him upon my last visit to him three months previous. I
immediately spoke to my wife, who was sitting within a few feet of me,
and said, ' Clara, there is something wrong at home ; father is either dead
or very sick.' She tried to persuade me that it was my imagination, bitt
I could not help feeling that something was wrong. Being very tired, we
soon after retired, and about 10 o'clock Artie woke me up repeating,
' Papa, grandpa is here.' I looked, and believe, if I remember right,
got up, at any rate to get the child warm, as he complained of coldness,2
and it was very sultry weather. Next morning I expressed my determina-
tion to go at once to Indianapolis. My wife made light of it and over-
persuaded me, and I did not go until Monday morning, and upon arriving
at home (my father's), I found that he had been buried the day before,
Sunday, July 13th.

" Now comes the mysterious part to me. After- 1 had told my mother
and brother of my vision, or whatever it may have been, they told me the
following : — -

" On the morning of the llth July, the day of his death, he arose
early and expressed himself as feeling unusually well, and ate a hearty
breakfast. He took the Bible (he was a Methodist minister), and went
and remained until near noon. He ate a hearty dinner, and went to the
front gate, and, looking up and down the street, remarked that he could
not, or at least would not be disappointed, some one was surely coming.
During the afternoon and evening he seemed restless, and went to the
gate, looking down street, frequently. At last, about time for supper, he
mentioned my name, and expressed his conviction that God, in His own
good time, would answer his prayers in my behalf, I being at that time
very wild. Mother going into the kitchen to prepare supper, he fol-
lowed her and continued talking to her about myself and family, and
especially Arthur, my son. Supper being over, he moved his chair near
the door, and was conversing about me at the time he died. The last
words were about me, and were spoken, by mother's clock, 14 minutes of
7. He did not fall, but just quit talking and was dead.

" In answer to my inquiries, my son Arthur says he remembers the
circumstances, and the impression he received upon that occasion is
ineffaceable. " SAMUEL S. FALKINBURG."

We have procured a certificate of death from the Indianapolis Board
of Health, which confirms the date given.

Mrs. Falkinburg writes to us, on Sept. 12, 1884 : —

"In answer to your request, I will say that I cheerfully give my
recollection of the circumstance to which you refer.

" We were living in Brown County, Indiana, 50 miles south of'
Indianapolis, in the summer of 1879. My husband (Mr. S. S. Falkinburg)
was in the employ of one John Ayers, buying staves.

1 For phantasms seen in positions which would in reality be impossible compare
cases 203, 204, and 205.

2 See p. 37, note.

250 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

'On the evening of July llth, about 6.30 o'clock, he came into the
room where I was sitting, and lay down on the carpet with my little boy
Arthur, complaining of being very tired and warm. Entering into
conversation on some unimportant matter, Arthur went to him and lay
down by his side. In a few moments my notice was attracted by hearing
Arthur exclaim : ' Oh, papa, grandpa, grandpa, papa,' at the same time
pointing with his little hand toward the ceiling. I looked in the direction
he was pointing, but saw nothing. My husband, however, said : ' Clara,
there is something wrong at home ; father is either dead or very sick.' I
tried to laugh him out of what I thought an idle fancy ; but he insisted
that he saw the face of his father looking at him from near the ceiling,
and Arthur said, ' Grandpa was come, for he saw him.' That night we
were awakened by Artie again calling his papa to see ' grandpa.'

" A short time after my husband started (Monday) to go to Indiana-
polis, I received a letter calling him to the burial of his father ; and some
time after, in conversation with his mother, it transpired that the time he
and Artie saw the vision was within two or three minutes of the time
his father died. " CLARA T. FALKINBURG."

Asked whether this was his sole experience of a visual hallucination,
Mr. Falkinburg replied that it was. Occasionally, however, since that
time, he has had auditory impressions suggestive of his father's presence.

Here it may perhaps be suggested that Mr. Falkinburg's hallu-
cination was due to the child's remark- But I know of no evidence
to support such a hypothesis. Where sensory hallucinations have
been traceable to verbal suggestion, as I have already mentioned,
(p. 188), there has either been a previous abnormal dominance of
one person by another, or the effect has been worked up among a
considerable number of people, in an atmosphere of emotion and
excitement. Till evidence is brought, we must, I think, decline to
credit the words of a child of five with such magic sway over its
father's mind as is exercised by a practised mesmerist over the
" subject " whose will he has annulled, or as causes the visions of a
hysterical fanatic to spread to her like-minded companions.

The next case is from Mrs. Fairman, of 43, Clifton Hill, N.W. She
has given us in confidence the names of the persons concerned, who
are all dead. The first account sent to us was written on December 29,
1884 ; but I quote the following slightly fuller one, which was sent
after a search had been made for the letter therein mentioned. The
sentence between brackets is taken from the former account.

"December 4th, 1885.

(353) "I much regret that the search I have made through my sister's
letters h.as proved useless. You see, the letter relating to the circumstance
was addressed to my mother, and has been destroyed long ago. In that
letter, my sister related the circumstance of both herself and her husband

xvni.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 251

seeing what he imagined to be his brother — the exact likeness to him
being apparent — passing the breakfast-room window ; so much so that he
spontaneously jumped up to go to the hall to meet him, but on arriving
did not see him. (They were at the time — as nearly as I can remember, in
1844 — living in the Highlands, and he had parted from his brother, who
was living in Nottinghamshire, on very unfriendly terms.) After a fruitless
search in the grounds, he awaited the arrival of the post-bag, which
contained a letter requesting him to start at once : his brother, whom he
had not seen for 15 years, being in a dying state. He did so ; and found
on arrival that he died at the exact time he had seen him pass the window.
It was on his immediate departure that Mrs. — — wrote home to us, and
before she had received tidings from her husband of his brother's death.
He repeated this statement to me some few years after, and said how
convinced he was at the time that his brother had arrived, and how kind
he considered it that he should make the first advances towards a
reconciliation. " CATHERINE A. FAIRMAN."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death took place on
May 2, 1841, the cause being "effusion on the brain."

In answer to an inquiry whether she is certain that her sister saw the
figure, Mrs. Fairman replies : —

" I feel sure that my sister saw a figure pass the window at the same
time as her husband did ; bnt as she had never seen her brother-in-law,
she could not say, ' There's Edward.' I remember perfectly her letter at
the time mentioning that she saw a someone go by."

[In conversation, Mrs. Fairman told me that she saw, immediately on
its arrival, the account written to her mother by her sister on the day of
the occurrence; and if this was so, her evidence is that of a person
who was made aware of the percipient's experience before the event with
which it corresponded was known (Vol. I., p. 148). But after an interval
of more than 40 years, no memory can be trusted as to details of this sort.
Nor, taking the evidence as it stands, can the hypothesis of mistaken
identity be absolutely excluded. Still a mistake of the kind is far more
unlikely in a country place — where the aspect of persons who come to the
house is usually familiar, and where the sudden disappearance of an
approaching visitor would be very unlikely — than in a crowded street.
See also above, pp. 62-3.]

The next account is from the late Surgeon-Major Armand Leslie,
and was first published in the Daily Telegraph. That newspaper,
during the autumn of 1881, contained a good deal of correspondence
of this sort ; and Dr. Leslie was one of the few contributors who
had the good sense and courage to sign his name, and thus to make
his record available as evidence. We have ascertained from four
different sources that he used to live at 5, Tavistock Place, W.C. He
afterwards served through the Russo-Turkish war with the Turkish
army ; was one of the twelve doctors sent out to Egypt at the time
of the cholera ; was chief of the medical department of Baker's staff J

252 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

and was killed at the battle of Teb. Unfortunately, we failed to
identify him till too late, and I can only quote the account as originally
given. Confirmation might perhaps be obtained from his family, but
our efforts to trace them have been, so far, unavailing. Not having
communicated with the narrator, we cannot vouch for the bona fides
of the account, the very startling incidents of which, and especially
the detail of the goloshes, are suggestive of a hoax ; and I therefore
do not give the case an evidential number. On the other hand, it
seems unlikely that a medical man of repute, even if he took the trouble
to invent such a story, would allow his name to appear as the authority
for it in a prominent newspaper. If the story was invented, its final
sentence, which introduces the writer's true place of residence, is a
clever touch of realism, and the point made at the end of the second

paragraph is a master-stroke.

"October, 1881.

" In the latter part of the summer of '78, between half-past 3 and 4 in
the morning, I was leisurely walking home from the house of a sick friend.
A middle-aged woman, apparently a nurse, was slowly following, going in
the same direction. We crossed Tavistock Square together, and emerged
simultaneously into Tavistock Place. The streets and square were deserted,
the morning bright and calm, my health excellent, nor did I suffer from
anxiety or fatigue.

" The following scene was now enacted : A man suddenly appeared,
striding up Tavistock Place, coming towards me, and going in a direction
opposite to mine. When first seen, he was standing exactly in front of my
own door. Young, and ghastly pale, he was dressed in evening clothes,
evidently made by a foreign tailor. Tall and slim, he walked with long
measured strides, noiselessly, without a sound1 — a tall white hat, covered
thickly with black crape, and an eye-glass, completed the costume of this
strange form. The moonbeams,2 falling on the corpse-like features, revealed
a face well known to me — that of a friend and relative. The sole and only
other person in the street, beyond myself and this being, was the woman
already alluded to. She stopped abruptly, as if spellbound, then rushing
towards the man, she gazed intently and with horror unmistakeable on his
face, which was now upturned towards the heavens, and smiling ghastly.
She indulged in her strange contemplation but during very few seconds,
and with extraordinary and unexpected speed for her age and weight, she
ran away with a terrific shriek and yells. This woman never have I seen
or heard of since, and but for her presence I could have explained the
incident — called it, say, subjection of the mental powers to the domination
of physical reflex action — and the man's presence would have been termed
a false impression on the retina.

" A week after the above event, news of this very friend's death

1 As regards this point, see p. 68, note.

2 The " moonbeams " and the " morning bright and calm " do not go well together;
and I certainly shall not argue that a hoaxer would have been careful to avoid the
discrepancy.

xvin.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 253

reached me. It had occurred on the morning in question. From the family
I ascertained that, according to the rites of the Greek Church, and to the
custom of the country he had resided in, he was buried in his evening
clothes, made abroad by a foreign tailor, and, strange to say, he wore
goloshes or indiarubber shoes over his boots, according also to the custom
of the country he died in ; these deaden completely the sound of the
heaviest footstep. I never had seen my friend wear an eye-glass. He did
so, however, whilst abroad, and began the practice some months before his
death. When in England he lived in Tavistock Place, and occupied my
rooms during my absence. " ARMAND LESLIE."

[Supposing this to be a genuine case, it is still highly probable that
some of the detail of the apparition was read back into it, after the real
facts were known.]

The lady who sends us the following narrative occupies a position
of great responsibility, and desires that her name may not be pub-
lished ; but it may be given to inquirers.

"1883.

(354) " When I was eight months old, my mother's younger sister, Mercy
Cox, came to reside with us, and to take charge of me. My father's
position at the Belgian Court, as portrait painter, obliged him to be much
abroad, and I was left almost wholly to the care of my very beautiful aunt.
The affection that subsisted between us amounted almost to idolatry, and
my poor mother wept many bitter tears when she came home, to see how
little I cared for anyone else. My aunt took cold, and for three years
lingered in decline. I was a quick child, and could read well and even
play prettily, so that I was her constant companion day and night. Our
doctor, Mr. Field, of the Charter House, greatly disapproved of this close
contact, and urged my parents to send me quite away. This was a
difficult feat to accomplish, the bare mention of the thing throwing my
aunt into faintings. At last Mr. Cumberland (the theatrical publisher)
suggested that I should join his two daughters, Caroline, aged 16, and
Lavinia, younger, at Mrs. Hewetson's, the widow of a clergyman resident at
Stourpaine, in Dorsetshire, who only took four young ladies. This was
represented to my aunt as something so wonderfully nice and advantageous
to me, that she consented to part with me. My portrait was painted, and
placed by her bed, and I remember how constantly she talked to me about
our separation. She knew she should be dead before the year of my
absence would be ended. She talked to me of this, and of how soon I
should forget her ; but she vehemently protested that she would come to
me there. Sometimes it was to be as an applewoman for me to buy fruit
of, sometimes as a maid wanting a place, always she would know me, but
I should not know her, till I cried and implored to know her.

" I was but nine when they sent me away, and coach travelling was very
slow in those days. Letters, too, were dear, and I very rarely had one.
My parents had sickness and troubles, and they believed the reports that
I was well and happy, but I was a very miserable, illtreated little girl.
One morning, at break of day — it was New Year's Day — I was sleeping
beside Lavinia. We two shared one little white tester bed, with curtains,
while Caroline — upon whom I looked with awe, she being 16, slept in

254 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

another similar bed at the other end of a long narrow room, the beds
being placed so that the feet faced each other, and two white curtains hung
down at the sides of the head. This New Year's morning, I was roughly
waked by Lavinia shaking me and exclaiming, ' Oh look there ! there's
your aunt in bed with Caroline.' Seeing two persons asleep in the bed, I
jumped out, and ran to the right side of it. There lay my aunt, a little on
her right side, fast asleep, with her mouth a little open. I recognised her
worked night-gown and cap. I stood bewildered, with a childish sort of
wonder as to when she could have come ; it must have been after I went
to bed at night. Lavinia's cries awakened Caroline, who as soon as she
could understand, caught the curtains on each side and pulled them
together over her. I tore them open, but only Caroline lay there, almost
fainting from fright. This lady, Miss Cumberland, afterwards became Mrs.
Part, wife of a celebrated doctor at Camden Terrace, [and now deceased.]

" I never talked of what had occurred, but one day, after I had long
returned home, I said to my mother, ' Do you know, mamma, I saw auntie
when I was at school 1 ' This led to an explanation, but my mother,
instead of commenting upon it, went and fetched her mother, saying to
her, ' Listen to what this child says.' Young as I was, I saw they were
greatly shocked, but they would tell me nothing except that when I was
older I should know all. The day came when I learned that my dear
aunt suffered dreadfully from the noise of St. Bride's bells, ringing in the
New Year. My father tried to get them stopped, but could not. Towards
morning she became insensible ; my mother and grandmother seated on
either side of her, and holding her hands, she awoke and said to my
mother, ' Now I shall die happy, Anna, I have seen my dear child.'
They were her last words. " D. E. W."

No general register of deaths was kept at the time of the incident
here related ; and we have exhausted every means to discover a notice
of the death, without success. But we have procured a certificate of
Mercy Cox's burial, which took place on January 11, 1829. This is quite
compatible with the statement that the death was on January 1 (though
such an interval, even in winter, is no doubt unusual), as the lady was
buried in a family vault, and probably a lead coffin had to be made.
January 1 would be, at the very least, a day of very critical illness. As
to the date of the apparition, the marked character of New Year's
Day decidedly favours the probability that Miss W.'s memory is correct.

In answer to inquiries, Miss W. says : —

"I was born in 1819. The death of my aunt took place in 1829.
Though to my most intimate friends — as Sir Philip Crampton, the late
Earl and Countesses (2) of Dunraven,1 I have often mentioned the
event, (and to Judge Halliburton,) I think I never wrote it fully except
for Lord Dunraven and his mother, in 1850, who were very desirous to
publish it, but I declined. I think that a great reason I have always had
for not talking of it was the awe with which it inspired my mother, and
her strict commands that ' I should not mention it to anybody.' Then,
too, I went to school and lost sight of Lavinia Cumberland, and I shrank
from the comments of strangers."

1 The present Lord Dunraven tells us that he does not remember to have heard his
father mention the circumstance.

xvni ] COLLECTIVE CASES. 255

In conversation Miss W. added that she had never experienced any
other hallucination ; also that the Cumberland girls had visited her home,
and seen her aunt — which accounts for Lavinia's recognition of the figure.

[We learn, through a relative of Miss Lavinia Cumberland (now Mrs.
Monarch, of 16, Regent's Park Road, N.W.), that she herself does not
recall the incident ; but that she remembers several times hearing her
sister, Mrs. Part, speak of a " ghost case " in which they had both been
somehow concerned.]

This case, depending on the narrator's memory at 31 of what occurred
when she was under 10, is not, of course, a strong one evidentially.
But the very fact that the experience recorded is of so striking a
kind makes it more probable that it was remembered than that it
was unconsciously invented. The very odd detail of Lavinia's
being the first to see the figure seems peculiarly unlikely to have
been wrongly imagined afterwards ; for it is a feature that would
have had no natural part in any sentimental idea of the child's about
her aunt's visiting her, and could only tend to detract in her mind
from the emotional significance of the visit. We have, moreover, the
tolerably complete assurance that the incident deeply impressed our
informant's mother at the time ; for this attitude of a third person,
and the injunction of silence to which it led, are even more unlikely
than the original experience to have been the product of the child's
fancy. It must, however, be observed that the second hallucina-
tion may have been due to Lavinia's verbal suggestion ; and that
the minute details of the appearance (which could hardly have
been so suggested) may have been subsequently imagined. It is
possible, therefore, that the case, though telepathic, may not have
been truly collective. It cannot with any certainty be reckoned
as reciprocal, as there is no evidence that the aunt's " seeing of her
dear child " was more than a dream or a subjective impression
(see p. 156).

In Dr. Leslie's case (supposing the account to be substantially true)
one of the percipients was presumably a total stranger to the agent.
In No. 354, the one of the two persons present who was least
intimately connected with the agent was the first to see the
phantasm ; but equally in this as in the former case, I should regard
her experience as dependent on the presence of the more nearly
connected person (see § 7 below). In the next example there is a
yet further step ; and of the two persons present, one of whom was son,
and the other a stranger, to the agent, the stranger alone saw the

256 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

phantasm, though both seem to have shared in a singular auditory
experience which they connected with it. The incident thus closely
resembles that described in case 242, where the phantasm appeared
not to the dying man's sister, but to a servant who was with her. The
narrative was copied by the present writer from a note-book of the
Rev. J. A. Macdonald, formerly of Manchester, and now of Rhyl.

(355) " On August 13th, 1879, I sailed to Hamburg with Captain
Ayre, of the ss. ' Berlin,' of Goole, who related to me that, about 25 years
before, he was staying with a friend named Hunt, at a small farmhouse at
Arming Grange, about 2 \ miles from Goole. On a summer evening, about 9
o'clock, Captain Ayre and his companion went to their bedroom, when they
both heard a noise at the side of the house, and both went to the window to
see what was the matter. The captain distinctly saw a man walking outside,
but Hunt could see nothing there, though he had heard the tramp of feet
as well as the captain. Being astonished that Hunt could not see the man,
Captain Ayre proceeded to describe him. He was a man of short stature,
with a stoop, and wore knee breeches, a red-fronted waistcoat with sleeves,
and a little black hat. Hunt instantly identified the description as
answering exactly to his own father. Captain Ayre assured me he had
never seen Hunt's father. After this the men went to bed, and both now
heard a noise as if the end of the bedstead had been wrenched, which
continued until about midnight, when Hunt's brother arrived on horseback
from Gilberdyke with the news of their father's death, which occurred
about three hours earlier that evening. The noises then ceased."

Mr. Macdonald adds : —

" This was taken down by me in pencil from Captain Ayre's own lips,
and transcribed when I returned from the voyage. The pencil account
was read over to Captain Ayre, and pronounced by him to be perfectly
correct. I cross-examined him carefully on every point. He specially
described the lonely position of the house, and the unlikelihood of any
stranger moving about in the vicinity or creating a disturbance in the
bedroom. "JAMES ALEX. MACDONALD."

This account was sent to Captain Ayre, who replied : —

"SS. ' Dresden,' Goole.

" November 4th, 1884.

" I have carefully read over the narrative, as given by the Rev. Mr.
Macdonald ; but it is so accurate in every detail that I fail to be able to
add anything thereto. " CHAS. AYRE."

[Our efforts to trace Mr. Hunt have been unsuccessful. Captain Ayre
has not heard of him for some time.]

In the next case the agent was not dying, but was in a somewhat
alarming fainting-fit. We have had several other similar cases (e.g.,
Nos. 20 and 110) ; they recall what was said above (p. 26) as to the
number of the death-cases where the mode of death has been drowning.
The narrator is Mr. H. G. Barwell, of 33, Surrey Street, Norwich.

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 257

"1883.

(356) " During the last week of July, 1882, Mr. and Mrs. W. and family
had settled themselves comfortably in a house they had hired at the Lizard,
Cornwall ; and a few days later Mr. Cox, an amateur artist from Liverpool,
joined them. Mr. Barwell arranged to meet Mr. Earle, an artist residing
in London (both of whose names are appended), on Monday, 7th August,
1882, dine with him and together take the night mail at Paddington,
booking for Penryn, Cornwall, the station from whence conveyances take
passengers to Helston, and thence to the Lizard, whither they were going
to join Mr. W. and family, as on many former occasions.

"Barwell and Earle therefore started according to arrangement by the
8.10 p.m. mail train from Paddington, on the evening of Bank Holiday,
Monday, 7th August, 1882. They travelled all night; the train on
arrival at Penryn was a little more than 15 minutes late, reaching there
on Tuesday morning, 8th August, 1882, at 7.23 a.m. No other passengers
alighted there from that train. They had some difficulty in getting a
porter to convey their luggage to the omnibus standing at the station, the
driver of which announced that if they could not come at once, he must
start without them. Passengers were nothing to him, he had to take
charge of and deliver the mail bags at various villages on his route. They
roused up the porter and insisted on his attention ; in the meantime their
train had departed and another train, from Falmouth to London, ran into
the station (due 7.24 a.m.) Their luggage was being placed on the
omnibus ; Earle had already climbed to his seat next the driver,' and
Barwell, having now seen all their luggage safely deposited on the vehicle,
was climbing up next him, when Earle exclaimed : ' Why, look there ! '
And on Barwell looking up, he saw in the train, just leaving the
station for London, their friend W. from the Lizard, waving his hand to
them while eagerly stretching his head out of the window to ascertain,
apparently, if they had arrived. They both cordially returned the salute
and the train disappeared round a curve, W. still looking out of the window
waving his hand.

" The two friends now made various conjectures as to the why and
wherefore of W.'s departure on the very morning of their arrival ; they
considered it very disappointing that he should thus be obliged to leave, on
the day our friendly party was about to be reunited. Earle was greatly
depressed about it, and wished to leave all further discussion on the subject
until they should ascertain from Mrs. W. the cause for his leaving the
Lizard just before their arrival. Amongst the surmises which they made
for W. being in the train which came from Falmouth, and not from the
Lizard where he was staying, was this ; that he had probably received at
the Lizard, on Monday, the 7th August, a telegram requiring his immediate
attendance in London or elsewhere, and that to prevent a very early start
by trap on Tuesday morning from the Lizard to catch the 7.30 a.m. train
to London at Penryn, he had made use of a return Bank Holiday excur-
sion steamer from Falmouth to the Lizard ; sleeping at Falmouth, and
starting by train from there at 7.15 a.m. for London, namely, the train
they saw him in.

" They arrived in due course at Helston, had breakfast, and sauntered
about the old town tiL the next coach started for the Lizard at 11 o'clock
a.m. On nearing the Lizard, they were anxiously on the look-out for the

VOL. n. a

258 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

children of Mrs. W., to receive their usual hearty and sincere welcome on
arrival of the coach, and to learn from them where their respective domiciles
in the village had been chosen. The coach arrived, but none of the W.
family were to be seen.

" The luggage was taken off the coach and left on the village green in
front of the hotel, till information could be obtained as to where rooms had
been engaged. The two friends strolled away, but soon met W.'stwo boys,
who on being asked why their father had gone away, seemed somewhat
surprised at the question, and replied that their father was lying ill at his
lodgings, and that their mother was also at home and very anxious about
him. The boys accompanied Earle and Barwell to their father's house in
the village, when Mrs. W. came out and greeted them cordially, telling
them briefly that Mr. W. had had a serious fainting fit that morning, and
that she was watching him with considerable anxiety.

" Mr. Cox now came in from his morning's work, and after the
exchange of salutations with Earle and Barwell, related to them the
following details of Mr. W.'s fainting fit : That he, Mr. W., and his two
boys started from the Lizard village to Housel Cove to bathe, at 7 o'clock
that morning, a distance a little over half a mile. When W. came out of
the sea, and was leaning against a rock, in a sitting posture, he fainted
quite away. Cox was dreadfully shocked and alarmed, for at one time he
could discover no action of the heart, and he feared he might be dead or
dying. He used all the means he could think of, and placed W. in a more
recumbent position, which seemed a more favourable one, for pulsation
was then discernible, and W. partially recovered, but was too weak to
move for a long time. Mrs. W was fetched, and then breakfast was taken
down to the Cove, and when vitality and strength had sufficiently returned
to enable W. to climb the steep ascent with assistance, they started home.

" The fainting of W. occurred at 7.30 a.m. at Housel Cove, the Lizard,
at the precise time when Earle and Barwell saw W. waving his hand to
them from the train at Penryn.

" The question has been put to Mr. W. whether he thought of or saw
Earle or Barwell, either just before or during his seizure, but he remembers
nothing of the kind.

' "CHARLES EARLE, 9, Duke street, Portland Place,
„ /q- j\ London.

\ g11 / " H. G. BARWELL, Surrey Street, Norwich.

" CHARLES H. Cox, Shrewsbury Road, N., Birkenhead."

In reply to inquiries, Mr. Bar well says, "Both Earle and I have
very good sight. My impression is that the person I saw looking from the
train window wore a soft, flexible, round hat." He can recall no other
experience of hallucination, except one which occurred many years ago, at
a time when he was not yet fully recovered from a severe fever.

Mr. Cox writes, on January 2nd, 1885 : —

" I was at the Lizard, in Cornwall, when my friends, Earle and
Barwell, saw (as they believed) the ' double ' of my friend W., whom, at
the time, 1 was instrumental in bringing round after his attack of illness.
My part in the affair was simply resuscitating Mr. W. from a very serious
condition. " C. H. Cox."

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 259

[Here, again, mistaken identity must be recognised as a possibility ;
but there are several points which combine to make it improbable. The
fact which the appearance forced on the minds of the two friends — namely,
W.'s departure — was so little in accordance with their expectations that it
distinctly surprised them ; they were thus in a wholly different attitude
from that (say) of awaiting a friend's arrival, when the senses are on the
alert for anything at all resembling him. Again, the figure seen seems to
have given unmistakeable signs of friendly recognition ; so that we should
not only have to suppose that the percipients mistook someone for their
friend, but that they mistook for him someone who was known to them, or
at any rate to one of them — clearly a much more unlikely occurrence. It
will be observed, moreover, that the difficulties of assuming a mistake as to
identity are immensely increased where two persons with good sight would
have had to share in it (see p. 244). Still, it is conceivable— though
scarcely compatible with the account — that the first sign of recognition
was given by Mr. Earle ; and that a stranger, seeing this sign, returned it,
either in joke, or imagining that the giver of it must be some one that he
had known and ought to recognise.]

I will conclude with a case which is probably the best-known
specimen of the sort on record, and on that very account may
naturally be mistrusted, as having " won its way to the mythical."
The following presentation of it is, however, very much more
complete than any that has yet been published, and is of a better
quality than is often procurable for so remote an incident. It is true
that, of the two percipients, we have the evidence of one only at
second-hand, and of the other at third-hand ; but we have the first-
hand evidence of a person who was informed of their experience
immediately on its occurrence, and long before the news of the agent's
death arrived.

(357) The following memorandum made by General Birch Reynardson,
of the account given him by one of the percipients, was sent to us by Mr.
Wm. Wynyard, of Northend House, Hursley, Winchester. He believed
the original document to be in the library of Mr. Chas. Reynardson, of
Holywell Hall, Stamford, who, however, has looked for it without success.
A copy1 was made on June 20, 1864, by Mr. Wynyard's father, General
E. Bi Wynyard (a brother of George Wynyard, the co-percipient,) who
says that the writer of the memorandum put it on paper as soon as he had
an opportunity after the conversation recorded therein. General E. B.
Wynyard has headed the paper : —

" Memorandum of a conversation between the late General Birch
Reynardson, and Colonel, afterwards Sir John, Sherbrooke."

" In the month of November, Sir John Sherbrooke and General Wyn-

1 This copy was enclosed in a letter to Colonel F. Clinton, of Clinton Ashley, Lyming-
ton, Hants. We have not actually inspected it ; but Colonel Clinton's daughter transcribed
it for General E. B. Wynyard's son, Mr. W. W. Wynyard, who kindly sent us the book
in which he in turn had copied it. It is curious that General E. B. Wynyard seems never
to have heard the narrative first-hand from his brother.

VOL. II. S 2

260 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

yard1 were sitting before dinner (between 5 and 6 o'clock) in their barrack1
room at Sydney Cove, in America. It was duskish, and a candle placed on
the table at a little distance. A figure, dressed in plain clothes and a good
round hat 2 on, passed gently between the above people and the fire.
While passing, Sir J. Sherbrooke exclaimed, ' God bless my soul, who's
that ? ' Almost at the same moment Colonel W. said, ' That's my brother,
John Wynyard,3 and I am quite certain he is dead.' Colonel W. was
much agitated, and cried and sobbed a great deal. Sir John said, ' The
fellow has got a devilish good hat, I wish I had it.' 4 They immediately
got up (Sir John was on crutches, having broken his leg), took a candle,
and went into the bedroom, into which the figure had entered : they
searched the bed and every corner of the room to no effect ; the windows
were fastened up with mortar. Mr. Stuart, the paymaster of the regiment,
noted the circumstance at the time. Sir John told me that Colonel W.
for two or three days was a good deal distressed and uneasy, but remained
most perfectly convinced of the death of his brother.

" They received no communication from England for about five months,
when a letter from Mr. Rush,5 the surgeon, announced the death of John
Wynyard at the moment, as near as could be ascertained, when the figure
appeared. In addition to this extraordinary circumstance, Sir John told
me that two and a-half years afterwards he was walking with Lilly Wyn-
yard 6 in London, and seeing somebody on the other side of the way, he
recognised, he thought, the person who had appeared to him and Colonel
Wynyard in America. Lilly Wynyard said that the person he pointed
out was a Mr. Eyre ;r that he had always been considered so like John
Wynyard that they were frequently mistaken for each other ; and that
money had actually been paid to this Mr. Eyre in mistake."

The following account appeared in Notes and Queries for July 2nd,
1859, in a letter signed "Eric."

" On the 23rd of October, 1823, a party of distinguished big-wigs were
dining with the late Chief Justice Sewell, at his house on the esplanade in
Quebec, when the story in question became a subject of conversation.
Among the guests was Sir John Harvey, Adjutant-General of the forces
in Canada, who stated that there was then in the garrison an officer who
knew all the circumstances, and who, probably, would not object to answer
a few queries about them. Sir John immediately wrote five queries,
leaving a space opposite to each one for an answer, and sent them to
Colonel Gore, who, if my memory serves me rightly, was at the head of

1 Note by Mr. W. Wynyard. " Colonel W. and Colonel S., then serving in the 23rd
[?33rd] Regiment as Captains. (?) Oct. 15th, 1785." We learn from General Edward
Wynyard, another son of General E. B. Wynyard, that George Wynyard died in 1809, as
Lieut-Colonel.

2 I cannot help thinking that this article of apparel may be the progenitor of the very
suspicious hat of the Warren Hastings legend, criticised in Vol. i., p. 152. The two
narratives have been probably often told in juxtaposition.

3 General Edward Wyuyard tells us that John Wynyard was a subaltern in the 3rd
Guards.

4 Note by the Rev. J. Birch Reynardson, son of the writer of the memorandum, and
brother-in-law of Mr. W. Wynyard. "He told my father that he made this remark, as
hats were not to begot there, and theirs were worn out."

B Note by Mr. W. Wynyard. " Surgeon of the Coldstream Guards."
6 Note by Mr. W. Wynyard. " L. W. was brother of Colonel W., and died in the
West Indies, Adjutant of the 20th Regiment."
T Note by Mr. W. Wynyard. " (?) Hay."

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 261

either the Ordnance or the Royal Engineer department. The following is
a copy of both the queries and the answers, which were returned to Sir
John before he and the other guests had left the Chief Justice's house : —

" ' My dear Gore,

" ' Do me the favour to answer the following : —

' Queries.

" ' 1. Was you with the 33rd Regiment when Captains Wynyard and
Sherbrooke believed that they saw the apparition of the brother of the
former officer pass through the room in which they were sitting ?

" ' 2. Was you not one of the first persons who entered the room, and
assisted in the search for the ghost 1

"'3. Was you not the person who made a memorandum in writing of
the circumstances, by which the singular fact of the death of Wynyard's
brother, at or about the time when the apparition was seen, was
established 1

" ' 4. With the exception of Sir J. Sherbrooke, do you not consider your-
self almost the only surviving evidence of this extraordinary occurrence 1

" ' 5. When, where, and in what kind of building did it take place?

f { mi i • ' (Signed) J. HARVEY.

' Thursday morning,

"'23rd October, 1823.'

' Answers.

" ' 1. Yes, I was. It occurred at Sydney, in the Island of Cape Breton,
in the latter end of 1785 or 6, between 8 and 9 in the evening. We were
then blocked up by the ice, and had no communication with any other part
of the world. < R.G.

" ' 2. Yes. The ghost passed them as they were sitting before the fire
at coffee, and went into G. Wynyard's bed-closet, the window of which
was putted (sic) down.1 ' R.G.

" ' 3. I did not make the memorandum in writing myself, but I
suggested it the next day to Sherbrooke, and he made the memorandum.
I remembered the date, and on the 6th June our first letters from England
brought the account of John Wynyard's death on the very night they saw
his apparition. ' R.G.

" ' 4. I believe all are dead, except Colonel Yorke, who then com-
manded the regiment, and is Deputy-Lieutenant of the Tower, — and I
believe Jones Panton, then an ensign in the regiment. ' R.G.

" ' 5. It was in the new barracks at Sydney, built the preceding
summer, one of the first erections in the settlement.

' (Signed) RALPH GORE.

" ' Sherbrooke had never seen John Wynyard alive ; but soon after
returning to England, the following year, when walking in Bond Street
with Wm. Wynyard, late D. A. General, and just after telling him the
story of the ghost, [he] exclaimed "My God/" and pointed out a person —
a gentleman — as [being] exactly like the apparition in person and dress.
This gentleman was so like J. Wynyard as often to be spoken to for him,
and affected to dress like him. I think his name was Hayman.

" ' I have heard Wm. Wynyard mention the above circumstance, and
declare that he then believed the story of the ghost. ' (Signed) R.G.'

" The above is taken from a copy made from the original queries and

1 " Query, puttied down, to exclude the cold ? "

262 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

answers, and given to me, only a few weeks after the date affixed to the
queries ; and to it is added, in the handwriting of the copyist, the
following : —

" ' A true copy from the original. The queries are written in black ink
in the handwriting of Sir John Harvey, Deputy Adjutant-General of
British America, and signed by him ; the answers are in red ink, written
and signed by Colonel Gore. The original paper belongs to Chief Justice
Sewell. Sir J. Sherbrooke was lately Governor-General of Lower Canada.1
It is said that Sir John Sherbrooke could not bear to hear the subject
spoken of.'

" The copyist was a near relative of the Chief Justice, and died in
1832. He was one of my most intimate friends."

[There is a discrepancy between Colonel Gore's and Sir J. Sherbrooke's
accounts, as to which of the Wynyard brothers accompanied Sir J. Sher-
brooke in Bond Street. The detail as to the Bond Street incident following
immediately on a narration of the story looks like an unfortunate addition,
the only effect of which is to inspire distrust, probably quite undeserved, of
the rest of the statement.]

It is much to be regretted that the gentleman who sent this account
to Notes and Queries did not sign his name. It is, however, highly
improbable that Colonel Gore's statements are forgeries ; and we are
justified, I think, in regarding them as genuine by the following account,
received from a niece of his, Miss Langmead, of Belmont, Torre, Torquay.

" September 3rd, 1883.

" Colonel Gore, of the 33rd, married my mother's sister, and he
narrated the story to my mother and to my elder sister himself, most
emphatically. I have heard it from them both, over and over again, and
my sister wrote the account some years ago. She heard Colonel Gore tell
it more than once, and always with strong feeling, which impressed every
word on her memory. I have not got her paper now, but I knew it
perfectly by heart. I have often heard my sister say that no one who
heard Colonel Gore tell the story could doubt the powerful impression
made on him at any rate.

" There were other little particulars, such as the impossibility of hiding
in the barrack rooms, which were two above and two below, and so
slightly built that every sound was heard, but I have not enlarged more
than I could help. The story has been printed with variations in many
books of collected ghost-stories, but not always correctly. It is usually
said that it was a twin brother who was met in Bond Street, but that was
not the case.

" It was in the time of the American war, and some of our troops were
in winter quarters at Cape Breton. The weather was very severe and the
harbour frozen over. The ships expected from England had not arrived,
and the supplies had run short, especially the allowance of wine. Four
officers, afterwards entitled General [mistake for Colonel] Wynyard, Sir
John Sherbrooke, Sir Hildebrand Oakes, and Colonel Gore, of the 23rd
[? 33rd] Regiment, were in barracks at the top of a steep ascent, guarded
by a sentry below. They had dined together and then separated, two of
them being engaged upstairs in looking over maps and plans of the seat

i " From July, 1816, to July, 1818."

xvm.] - COLLECTIVE CASES. 263

of war. The other two, General Wynyard and Sir J. Sherbrooke, remained
in the inner room.

" Suddenly an exclamation from General Wynyard startled the two
above, who ran downstairs, expecting that the ice had broken and the
looked-for ships arrived. They found Sir J. Sherbrooke alone, standing
amazed, and in. answer to their eager inquiry as to what had happened, he
said that a gentleman, a stranger to him, had come in at the door, looked
fixedly at General W., and passed into the inner room. General W. exclaimd
aloud, ' Good God, my brother Jack ! ' and followed him into the bed-
room, from which there was no outlet. He presently returned, much
agitated, having found no one. Colonel Gore took out his watch and
marked the time, while another of the party ran down to the sentinel, who
declared no person had passed. Sir J. Sherbrooke described the figure as
dressed in a hunting costume, such as he had never seen, with a hunting-
whip in his hand. Days went on, the ice broke up, news came from
England to General W. of his brother's death, who was killed in the
hunting-field at the very time in which the figure appeared in the barrack-
room. Papers also came out, containing the fashions, one being the
hunting suit with a particularly shaped boot, such as the figure had worn.
After the peace, and the troops had returned to England, Sir John Sher-
brooke 'was walking through Bond Street with Colonel Gore, when he
stopped and said, pointing to a man who was coming towards him, ' There
is the figure I saw at Cape Breton.' Colonel Gore replied, ' That man was
called Jack Wynyard's double, he was so very like him.'

" Before Sir J. Sherbrooke's death, long afterwards, he was asked by a
friend what he then thought of the apparition at Cape Breton. He replied
that he could not explain it, but that every detail was true.

" M. F. L."

[Here the hunting-dress, and the corresponding detail about the
hunting-field, may almost certainly be referred to a transformative process
in Colonel Gore's mind. The peculiar boot may probably be a degenerate
representative of the spruce hat in Sir J. Sherbrooke's account. It would
further be a very natural mistake on the part of Colonel Gore's niece to
imagine that he was Sherbrooke's companion in the walk in Bond Street.]

Next come two items of evidence, for which George Wynyard, the co-
percipient, was the original authority.

General Edward Wynyard, of 5, Portman Street, W., writing to us on
April 7, 1885, tells us that the incident was narrated to him by his aunt,
Mrs. Wright, who " had often heard the story " from her brother, George
Wynyard. He observes that her narrative corresponded in nearly every
particular with the account given in Chambers' Book of Days, Vol. II.,
p. 448. The said account (the authority for which is not given, save in so
far that a relative of George Wynyard had pronounced it substantially
true,) agrees in the essential points with Colonel Gore's j1 but differs in,
stating that the subsequent recognition took place when Sherbrooke was

1 Miss Browne wrote to us on Jan. 18, 1884, from Farnham Castle, Surrey, to the
effect that she too had heard the incident described by Mrs. Wright, and also by " General
Sir George Nugent, who was in the garrison at the time " ; and that the details were very
similar to those in Miss Langmead's account.

264 . COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

walking with two gentlemen, in Piccadilly, and that he actually accosted
the gentleman, who told him that he was Wynyard's twin-brother. These
are precisely the sort of inaccuracies most likely to creep into a story in
its passage from mouth to mouth.

The Rev. O. H. Gary, of Tresham Vicarage, Chudleigh, wrote to our
friend, the Rev. A. T. Fryer, on April 3, 1882 :—

" The story, as my mother, who heard it from Wynyard himself, used
to tell it, was as follows :• — General Sherbrooke and Mr. (or General)
Wynyard were sitting together in a hut in Canada (or Nova Scotia or
elsewhere in North America) when a figure entered the tent and passed
through into an inner apartment, whence there was no means of exit except
where they were sitting. Wynyard recognised the figure as that of his
brother, but thought someone was playing practical jokes, as he knew
his brother to be in England at the. time. On searching the inner room
the figure was found to have disappeared.

" They had both seen the figure. The brother died at that time. Some
years afterwards, the same two officers were walking together in London,
when Sherbrooke saw a man on the opposite side of the street, and said,
' Look, there is the man that we saw in the tent.' Wynyard replied, ' No,
that is not my brother, but he is so like him that my brother was once
arrested for debt in mistake for him.' "

[Here again we have characteristic illustrations of the way in which
narratives become modified in transmission. " The same two officers " is
of course neater and easier to remember-than " one of the same officers
and a brother of the other " ; and the " arrest for debt " seems to be an
oddly inverted reminiscence of the detail mentioned by Sir J. Sherbrooke,
that " money had been paid to one in mistake " for the other.]

In conclusion, the following letter appeared in the Daily Telegraph of
October 20, 1881:—

" SIR, — In reference to the circumstances related as occurring in Sir
John Sherbrooke's tent, in North America, permit me to add that I heard
an exactly similar account of it in Dublin about the year 1837, by
General D'Aguilar, then on the staff, and who, I think, had been one of
the occupants of the tent.1 Colonel ' Wynyard's ' name, who was on the
Dublin staff at the time, was also mentioned. — Yours truly,

" G. CRICHTON, M.D."

§ 7. The cases of the preceding section, and of § 2, though not
evidentially among the strongest in our collection, are sufficient, I
think, to establish a strong presumption for the genuineness of this
collective type of telepathic hallucination. But the establishment of
facts, in " psychical " as in other departments of Nature, may far out-
strip our power of satisfactorily accounting for them ; and such
account as I can render of these phenomena is here put forward rather
as a suggestion or adumbration than as a final view.

1 This does not appear in any other account. Complete information as to various
details could only be obtained by a search in the archives of the War Office. It is hoped
that in course of time this search may be authorised.

XVIIL] COLLECTIVE CASES. 265

To begin with, it would, I think, be irrational not to recognise a
special significance in the fact that in all the cases of § 6, and most
of those of § 5, the several percipients were together : to that extent,
at all events, conditions of place seem to enter vitally into the pheno-
mena. But there is nothing in this that need drive us for a moment off
idealistic or " psychical " ground. I have spoken often, throughout the
book, of a rapport between the parties concerned in a psychical trans-
ference— meaning by the word simply some pre-existing psychical
approximation which conditions the transference. The rapport has
usually been that of kinship or affection. But I regard these
collective cases as strongly indicative of a rapport of a different sort
— consisting not in old-established sympathy, but in similarity of
immediate mental occupation. I suspect that such a rapport might
be induced by a common environment — by partnership in that
particular piece of the " life of relation " within which the hallucina-
tion happens to fall. That is to say, I should regard the fact that
B's hallucination spreads to C, when B and C are in the same place,
as possibly largely due to the fact that a very important part of the
contents of B's and C's minds is — and has been for some hours,
minutes, or moments preceding — identical. The local condition would
be, not any physical presence or centre of influence in the circle of
space outside them, but the community of scene, and of other
objective impressions, in the two parallel currents of ideas which are
their real two existences.1 It must be remembered that we have no
a priori means of knowing what the mental conditions that favour
telepathy are likely to be. And I venture to think that if, by some
process of psychical chemistry, the elements and affinities of different
minds at particular moments could be analysed and estimated, mere
community of scene and of immediate sensory impression might count
for more — might prove, that is, to involve a larger amount of real
correspondence or identity — than the external and accidental
character of such passing experience might have led us to expect.

But this idea, if tenable, seems capable of being extended. If
community of environment opens a channel of supersensuous com-
munication between B and C, we come to conceive a greater fluidity
(so to speak) in the directions of telepathic transference than the.

1 A similar explanation may be suggested for the fact that thought-transference
experiments rarely succeed when agent and percipient are so far withdrawn from one
another as to have quite different environments. This fact would otherwise seem
explicable only by some hypothesis of " brain- waves " diminishing in strength with the
increase of the distance between the parties — a hypothesis which has the disadvantage of
being quite inapplicable to many of the facts of spontaneous telepathy (Vol. i., p. 112).

266 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

more usual cases of a distant agent and a single percipient could
reveal. And this brings me to what I suspect to be a more correct
account of the collective telepathic cases that have been passed in
review.

In the earlier part of this chapter, I consulted clearness by keeping
separate the hypothesis (1) of joint and independent affection of B and
C by A, and the hypothesis (2) of C's affection by B who alone is
directly affected by A. Now looking back at these hypotheses in the
light of the evidence, the objections (see § 2) to the assumption of
independent psychical affection of B and C by A come back on us
with only increased force. As long as telepathic hallucinations are
rare, and lead by their rarity to the conclusion that they generally
require not only an abnormal condition of the agent, but specific
susceptibility in the percipient, nothing can make it seem otherwise
than astonishing that two closely similar specimens of them, in con-
nection with the same agent, should independently concern two
percipients at the same moment. One might admit such an
astonishing coincidence once or twice — I have suggested its applica-
tion to a few cases in § 2 above ; l but. it seems impossible to lay it
down as a principle of explanation, by which any number of
collective hallucinations may be accounted for. No view which
shrinks from assuming a local and physical presence of A, and at
the same time rejects every sort of direct transference between B and
C, can avoid this difficulty ; and the consideration seems to me of
such weight as to exclude hypothesis (1) in the form stated. I feel
absolutely driven to suppose that where C's experience resembles B's,
it is in some direct way connected with B's ; this is the only alter-
native that I can see to admitting a physical basis to the percept.
But this does not necessarily imply the adoption of hypothesis (2) in
its crudest and most obvious form ; the " direct way " need not, I
conceive, be a transfer between B and C wholly unconnected with A
— a transfer, that is to say, which must have equally taken place had
B's hallucination been purely subjective. Though the evidence in
§ 5 above inclines me strongly to the opinion that sensory hallucina-
tions, as such, are transferable things, I do not believe this to be the
complete explanation of the later telepathic cases. And I now
venture to suggest that with slight modification the two hypotheses
— of joint affection by A, and of direct transference between B and C

1 In all of these, however, where the two percipients were near together and had been
sharing the same life, I think it probable that the experiences were not truly independent.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 267

— may be amalgamated ; and that the amalgamation is really more
probable than either hypothesis in its isolated form.

Where A, the distant agent, is in rapport both with B and C,
it is possible to suppose that B and C are jointly and independently
impressed by A, though the particular form — the hallucination — in
which they simultaneously embody their impression is still an effect
of B's mind on C's, or of C's on B's. The joint impression from A
may be conceived as having in itself a tendency to facilitate this
farther effect — that is to say, psychical communication between B and
C may find a readier and wider channel at the exceptional moments
when they are attuned by a common telepathic influence than, e.g.,
when one of them is staring at a card and the other is endeavouring
to guess it. But even for these cases, I think it so dangerous,
in view of the apparent rarity of " psychical " affections, to assume
any sort of independent psychical affection of different minds at
the same moment, that I should prefer to regard A's influence on
C as derived through B. And this certainly commends itself as the
process where C is a stranger to A, or not a person whom it would
have seemed natural that A's vicissitudes should in any way affect.1
In such cases I conceive that, while C's experience depends on B's
presence or existence, and even probably on the form of B's experience
when the two are similar, yet A's influence may really and truly
extend to C ; that in fact there is a rapport between A and C,
established ad hoc by the rapport of both of them with B. B would
be thus not the instigator, or not solely the instigator, but the channel,
of C's percipience — the assumption being that a mind in which B
holds a prominent place, such as C's, may be abnormally susceptible
to an influence which abnormally impresses B. Especially would this
conception relieve the difficulty of such extreme cases as Nos. 242 and
355, above ; where B's part in the occurrence was to all appearance
suppressed, and C, a stranger to A, was the sole percipient.2 We can
scarcely doubt that the presence of B, the near relative of the supposed
agent, was a condition of C's percipience ; while at the same time it
seems absurd to suppose that B infects C with a sensory hallucination
which he himself does not experience. We seem driven, then, to
regard B as a mere channel of influence ; and that is a part which,
there is no absurdity in supposing to be played unconsciously. For

1 E.g., cases 169, 264, 279, 339, 348, 350, 353, 354, 357.

2 See also case 307, where A's bond, such as it was, was with B and not with C ; and
compare case 311.

268 COLLECTIVE CASES. [CHAP.

the better established tacts of telepathy have familiarised us with
both unconscious reception and unconscious propagation of telepathic
impulses ; and however unexpected, it is at least quite conceivable
that the two events should take place as part of a single process —
which is all that the transmission of an impulse from A to C through
the unwitting B implies.

The above view, of rapport through community of mental occupa-
tion, may likewise afford some explanation of the otherwise puzzling
cases where the telepathic influence exercised by A seems itself to
have depended rather on local than on personal reasons ; as in case 29
in Chap. V., where the agent's form was seen by a person only
slightly connected with her, in a spot in which she was known
to have been considerably interested ; l or in cases where the
actual percipient had little or no connection with the agent, but was
situated in a place where the agent might naturally conceive some
other and nearly-connected person to be ; 2 or in cases where a dying
person's form is alleged to have been seen by strangers in that person's
old home;3 or in a converse case in Chap. III. of the Supplement,
§ 3 — Miss G.'s veridical dream of the death of a comparative stranger
in her own old home. It is not necessary that two persons
should know one another, for certain daily scenes and local impressions
to be deeply stamped in common on their two minds ; and in this
way locality might constitute an ideal bond between A and B who
are apart, as we conceived that it might do between B and C who are
together.

An even further extension could be given to this idea, if we admit
the supposition that A's own susceptibility may be quickened, in the
way that was so strongly suggested by some of the reciprocal cases in
the preceding chapter. I there pointed out (pp. 161-2 and 164) the
indications afforded of a special sort of clairvoyance ; telepathic, in the
sense that it depends on B's living presence in the scene which A
perceives ; but independent in the sense that B and his surroundings
are perceived while B's own state is not critical but normal — the
abnormality of state being confined to A, whose extension of faculty
in trance or at death makes him percipient of B, as well as the agent
of B's percipience. A view akin to this has been developed by Mr.
Myers, in the Note that follows a few pages further on ; and the

1 It is probable that a local explanation would apply to cases 239, 248, 313, 343, 350,
589.

2 E.g., Nos. 192, 225, 660, as well as No. 242 just mentioned ; and compare No. 307.

3 E.g., case 666.

xviii.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 269

temptation to apply it to the collective cases is considerable, since it
enables us to conceive the scene, and the sense of being present there,
as common to the minds of A, B, and C alike ; and so far as such
community is a favourable condition for telepathic affection, it would
explain A's power to affect the other two.1 To some ioint hallucina-
tions, however, {e.g., cases 327, 328, 329, and perhaps 348, where A,
the original of the phantasm, has been in a normal waking state at
the time, such an explanation seems quite irrelevant ; and its admis-
sibility elsewhere must, I think, depend on our obtaining more proof
than we yet have of A's reciprocal percipience, in collective cases
which are clearly due to his agency. The reciprocal type having
seemed, on the evidence, to be a rare if not a doubtful one, we ought
to be doubly cautious of making it the ground of explanation for
further and more perplexing phenomena.

1 I do not think — herein differing from Mr. Myers — that the mere fact of A's clair-
voyant perception of the scene, even if established, would account for the similarity and
simultaneity of the two resulting affections, so as to enable us to dispense with the
hypothesis of a direct dependence of one of them on the other. Strong evidence seems
needed, before we can assume the particular mental events involved in A's clairvoyant
perception to be more calculated than any other abnormal events of his experience — such
as simply dying in his bed at home — to impose a particular hallucination on several minds
at once. However much his clairvoyant perception of B and C and their surroundings
may be supposed to facilitate his impressing them, why should the two independent
impressions, which according to telepathic analogy might take many different forms, be
projected by B and C in the same form?

While therefore I can accept, for certain cases at any rate, Mr. Myers' description of
the appearance of A to B as proximately dependent on A's "perception of his own
presence " in, or his " psychical translation " to, the scene where his phantasm is
observed — for this is practically identical with the suggestion made above (p. 162) that an
"extension of A's susceptibility in a certain direction has involved the power to act
abnormally in the same direction " — I cannot go on to admit that it is " a subsidiary
question," depending on varying degrees of susceptibility to telepathic impressions,
whether the phantasm is seen by B only, or by a whole group of persons. To do this
would seem tome to be transferring to the terms " perception of presence " and "psychical
translation " some of the connotation of physical presence and translation.

Mr. Myers would obviate this objection by the further supposition that the aspect of
A which B and C perceive is derived in detail from his mind and not theirs — which would
no doubt be a convenient way of accounting for the similarity of their hallucinations. But
in the first place, I fail to see any ground for connecting this supposition (as Mr. Myers
connects it) with the previous hypothesis of A's clairvoyant presence at the place where B
and C are. The supposed derivation would clearly have to be from an unconscious or
sub-conscious part of A's mind ; for there is no more reason for supposing his conscious
thoughts to be concentrated on his own aspect when he is clairvoyantly perceiving a
scene, than when he is consciously lying in bed and perceiving his normal surroundings in
a normal way. And so far as any conscious occupation of the mind may be supposed
to throw into abeyance any assumed mental activities of a more latent kind, one would
expect that A's interest in the friend or friends whom he is psychically visiting would be
specially calculated to thrust into the background his sub-conscious sense of his own
aspect ; so that the difficulties (Chap, iii., § 9, and Chap, xii., § 8) which in any case are
involved in the hypothesis that A's mind transfers to B the detailed image of his aspect,
are rather increased than relieved by supposing him clairvoyant at the time. .

And, in the second place, this hypothesis of detailed derivation from the agent's
mind, as applied to collective cases, seems to me in itself open to grave doubt. We have
encountered, no doubt, an important group of cases (Chap, xii., § 8) in which certain
details of a phantasmal appearance did seem to be literally derived from the agent's
mind, and not simply projected by the percipient from his own resources. But those
who admit the psychological continuity of dreams and hallucinations on which I have
laid so much stress, and who have marked at every stage the ways in which the

270 COLLECTIVE CASES.

And indeed any conjectural explanations of these more outlying
telepathic phenomena have, I am well aware, an air of rashness and
unsoundness. This may very likely be due to their being really
rash and unsound ; but it may also possibly be due to the fact that
our view of the field before us is still very partial and dim. The duty
of caution in all evidential matters does not exclude the duty of
keeping the mind open to new conceptions on this threshold of new
knowledge, and not allowing any hypothesis that has provisionally
commended itself to become a rigid barrier, within which further
facts must be forced or else disallowed. And if our central thesis
stands — if " psychical " transferences from mind to mind be admitted
as in rerum naturd — the rashness, I think, would be in attempting
to set a limit to the possible implications of this admission. Its
tendency, at any rate, is to give a tangible meaning to that solidarity
of life which Idealism proclaims ; to lead us to regard individual
minds, not as isolated units, but as all in potential unity — as entering
into a scheme whose relation to the telergic influence somewhat
resembles that of the physical world to electricity. And in such a
scheme we need not be surprised if the manifestations of action and
affinity between the parts are as sudden and shifting, and to the
superficial view as isolated, as in the physical world those of electrical
relations between different pieces of matter. But a far larger basis of
well-attested cases is, no doubt, needed before reflections of this sort
can be profitably pursued ; and I will not further run the risk of
inverting the relation of speculation to evidence which it has been
throughout my endeavour to maintain.

percipient's mind seems independently to react upon and develop the telepathic impres-
sion, may incline to regard these literal representations as the exception rather than the
rule ; and may hesitate to extend the hypothesis of visual images transferred (so to speak)
in a full-fledged condition, to cases where the percept included nothing that the percipient's
memory or imagination might not well have supplied. Moreover, in some of the collective
cases themselves, the evidence of dissimilarity in the percepts seem sufficient to show that
the percipient minds were no mere tabulae rasas for a foreign image. But a much more im-
portant observation with respect to the " collective " evidence here presented is this — that
(putting aside the second-hand record, No. 670, where the description of details cannot
be safely relied on) in not a single case have any such special features of dress or aspect
as must perforce be derived from the mind of the distant A been simultaneously perceived
by B and C. It is only in case 653, and in the dubious narrative quoted on p. 252, that
such features are alleged to have been perceived even by B ; and there is no proof what-
ever that C on those occasions was aware of them. This, in my view, is just what was to
be expected. For if it is indicated, as the general result of the telepathic evidence, that
the most dominant form of agency and the most definite and detailed form of transfer are
extreme rather than normal forms, it would scarcely be conceivable that in case after case
a double exhibition of them should occur, and A's sub-conscious sense of his own aspect, by
two independent manifestations, be reflected in a faithful picture of him before the eyes
of two persons at once.

CONCLUSION.

§ 1. IN bringing to a close the principal division of this work — the
presentation of the case for spontaneous telepathy as supported by
a considerable body of first-hand records — it will scarcely, I think, be
necessary to attempt anything like a summary of the foregoing
chapters. It is indeed impossible effectively to summarise facts the
whole force of which lies in their cumulation. One point only I
would once again emphasise — the one with which I started — to wit,
that radical connection between experimental and spontaneous
telepathy, the importance of which in my own view I may best
express by saying that I am unable even to guess what effect the
body of testimony to the latter class of cases would have on me, were
I not convinced of the reality of the former. This being understood, so
far as the evidential position of the subject admits of a brief connected
statement, I have endeavoured to state it in the closing pages of the
fourth chapter. Neither there nor subsequently have I extenuated the
evidential shortcomings of many of the spontaneous cases ; but for the
evidence taken as a whole, it may be claimed that it resembles not so
much a shifting shadow, which may be left to individual taste or
temperament to interpret, as a solid mass seen in twilight, which it
may be easy indeed to avoid stumbling over, but only by resolutely
walking away from it. The temptation to walk away from it — to
dismiss it with a hasty glance — will be very strong. The matter
presented is from a literary point of view monotonously dull, from a
scientific point of view confusingly inexact : the study of it in detail
is hard work, while at the same time it is work which affords none of
the stimulus of high intellectual activity. Yet it is only by detailed
study that my colleagues and I have arrived at our own view ; and so
far are we from putting ourselves into antagonism to the sceptical
attitude of Science, that we should regard any conclusion formed
without such study as premature. On this still dubious territory, a

272 CONCLUSION,

number of direct and independent attestations, which would be utterly
superfluous elsewhere, will be — or ought to be — demanded ; and
others will need, as we have done, to have the true nature and amount
of the evidence far more distinctly brought home to them than is
necessary in realms already mastered by specialists to whose dicta
they may defer.

But in point of fact, the dulness of the work in detail scarcely
needs apology ; for it would never be specially remarked except in
connection with that totally unscientific view on which I commented
at the very opening of the treatise. The whole subject of psychical
influences has been mixed up in the public mind with ideas of the
supernatural or uncanny — with nervous thrills and spurious excite-
ments. When such associations are carefully excluded, the details of
the inquiry cannot be expected to have more, and may perhaps have
not much less, attraction than those of the recognised physical
sciences. And so far as the unexciting character of the present
collection — poor in thrills, but tolerably rich in verified dates
— tends to make this sober view prevail, it will be a direct
advantage. For, exactly like the physical sciences, the research
has to go on, methodically, not sensationally ; and it has only just
begun to be methodised. The present instalment of facts, though
probably solid enough to surfeit those who are not troubled by
a priori difficulties, and to repel the mere seeker after marvels,
cannot be expected to convince every reasonable searcher after
truth ; and no one (as I have remarked before) can fix the precise
amount of testimony which a candid mind is bound to regard as
adequate. And we accept this view of the position rather as an
incentive than as a discouragement. For we are fortified by the
belief that it is not so much the necessary material, as the combined
effort to render it available, that has hitherto been lacking. Even the
record now presented, as I have pointed out, is drawn from the com-
paratively small number of persons who have heard of our existence,
and much of it from the limited circle of our own acquaintance. We
are justified, therefore, in regarding the area hitherto explored as but a
corner of a very much larger field, which may be gradually swept ;
and the very flaws in the present collection will have had their use, if
they direct attention to the true standard of evidential requirements,
and if through them future telepathic incidents stand a better chance
of being caught at the critical moment, while the opportunities for
investigation are complete.

CONCLUSION. 273

§ 2. The commoner difficulties which hamper progress may, more-
over, be expected largely to disappear, as time goes on. As the idea of
Telepathy becomes understood, the difference will be more and more
realised between facts which make for it and facts which do not ;
aid towards the establishment of some strong item of proof will not
so often be refused on the ground that no proof is needed — that every-
body has had presentiments fulfilled, or has occasionally guessed what
his friend was thinking of; and efforts will be more profitably directed
through the mere existence of a scheme into which the results may fall.
And further, a rational public spirit in the matter may be trusted to
develop. The reluctance to give any prominence to what are often
legitimately regarded as very private experiences will gradually give
way, when it is recognised that the significance of each item of
evidence, even as matter for private contemplation, depends on the
combination of many items ; and among those who take this wider
view, fewer will shrink from the direct attestation which alone can
ensure the result that they profess to desire, and which they would
readily give to any other sort of fact in heaven or earth that they truly
believed in. As for the merely negative difficulties — the general
grounds of objection to our work — we see them already diminishing
from the mere spirit of the age. The set of that spirit is very observably
towards a wider tolerance — a distrust of finalities and restrictions,
by whatever party imposed, and a faith in free inquiry, wherever it
may lead. Men are already ceasing to argue that the alleged facts
did not happen because they could not happen ; or that telepathy
is perhaps not true, and, therefore, if true, is not important ; or
that the recognised paths of labour, along which steady progress is
being made and may still be made to an unpredictable extent, are
so various and abundant that it is mere trifling to desert them for a
dubious track, where progress, even could it be supposed possible,
would still be a useless anachronism.

§ 3. But though "psychical research" is certain in time to surmount
ridicule and prejudice, and to clear for itself a firm path between easy
credulity on the one side and easy incredulity on the other, the rate of
its advance must depend on the amount of sympathy and support that ,
it can command from the general mass of educated men and women. In
no department should the democratic spirit of modern science find so
free a scope: it is for the public here to be, not — as in anthropological
researches — the passive material of investigation, but the active partici-

VOL. II. T

274 CONCLUSION.

pators in it. We acknowledge with warm gratitude the amount of
patient assistance that we have received — how patient and forbearing in
many instances, none can judge who have not tried, as private
individuals, to conduct a system of strict cross-examination on a wide
scale. But unless this assistance is largely supplemented, our under-
taking can scarcely hold its ground. Its interest must not for a moment
be supposed to be of the merely curious sort, sufficiently illustrated in a
loose batch of more or less surprising facts ; indeed, so far as the facts
excite surprise, it is a proof that the work is only beginning. If the
natural system includes telepathy, Nature has certainly not exhausted
herself in our few hundreds of instances : that these facts should be
genuine would be almost inconceivable if she had not plenty more
like them in reserve. And here is the practically interesting point ;
for, till the general fact is universally admitted, the several items of
proof must ever tend to lose their effect as they recede further into the
past. This peculiarity of the subject cannot be gainsaid, and must be
boldly faced. For aught I can tell, the hundreds of instances may
have to be made thousands. If the phenomena cannot be com-
manded at will, the stricter must be the search for them : if they are
exceptionally transient and elusive, all the greater is the importance
of strong contemporary evidence. The experimental work needs to
be, and easily might be, enormously extended : for many a year to
come the spontaneous phenomena must be as diligently watched for
and recorded as if each case stood alone in its generation. And
whatever the defects of the present attempt, so far as it supplies an
impulse or lends an aid in either of these directions, it will not
have failed in its object.

*#* I should be glad to extend my statistics of sensory hallucinations in
general, by canvassing another known number of persons taken at random. (See
Chap. XIII.) Readers who may feel disposed to help me in this matter, and
who will write to 14, Dean's Yard, S.W., will receive the necessary forms and
instructions. But apart from a special census, I should be grateful for accounts
of such phenomena from any persons who have themselves had experience of
them. The assurance that they are not things to be troubled about, and are
compatible with perfect bodily and mental health, may perhaps remove any dis-
inclination that might be felt to recording instances. The names of informants
will, of course, be held private.

VOL. il. T 2

NOTE, BY MR MYERS, ON A SUGGESTED MODE
OF PSYCHICAL INTERACTION.

§ 1. IT is with some hesitation that I lay before the public the
speculations contained in the following essay. They may seem, I fear,
both over-bold and over-complex ; and even the reader who follows them
with a provisional adhesion will find that if he gains in width, he will lose
in clearness of vision ; while the conception of telepathy as a relatively-
simple mode of colligating certain obscure phenomena will give place to a
view in which the old problems loom larger than ever, though, perhaps,
with some inter-relations made manifest which have not hitherto been
observed.

But in reply to the objection of rashness I must ask my readers to
distinguish between results unanimously arrived at, on the strength of
definite experiment and explicit testimony, by a group of painstaking
persons, and the speculations of one of their number, to which the rest
stand uncommitted, and which he offers tentatively, as the mere prelimi-
naries of what may in time become a surer view. And to the objection
of complexity I answer that my hypothesis is free at least from the one
unpardonable sin of hypotheses : it is not certainly unverifiable, — at least
it may prompt experiment and direct observation.

I shall assume in the following pages that the reader has already
mastered the general drift and purport of these volumes. And, perhaps,
I can best introduce my own view by dwelling first on a difficulty in our
recorded evidence which drove my own mind to seek for some wider
solution.

§ 2. The reader, then, is aware that veridical phantasms — sounds or
sights, that is to say, coincident with some death or crisis — have been
treated in this work on the analogy of experimental thought-transference,
as probably being in effect the externalisation of a telepathic impression, — „
the hallucinatory forms in which a feeling or idea transferred from the mind
of a distant person embodies itself to the percipient's senses. In dealing
with the simpler forms of phantasmal sight, sound, or other impression,
this analogy seemed to hold good ; and we found, moreover, enough of

278 NOTE ON A SUGGESTED MODE OF

parallelism between telepathic hallucinations and the apparently casual
and meaningless hallucinations of sane persons to suggest that telepathic
phantasms were at least shaped by the percipient's mind, in the same
manner as those delusive phantasms which the mind not only shapes, but
presumably originates altogether.

All this, however, referred to phantasms perceived by one person only.
On such a theory one would hardly expect that a phantasm would ever be
perceptible to several persons at once ; but rather that strangers in the
company of the percipient would neither hear nor see anything, — would
not be involved, at any rate, by mere local proximity in that message
between according minds.

It was plain, however, that this question could not be answered
a priori. It needed what had not hitherto been forthcoming, namely, a
collection of observed instances large enough to allow of a tolerably wide
induction. And the collection offered in these volumes — though it might
with advantage be tenfold larger — does in fact offer some interesting
statistical results which bear on this problem.

In the first place, it is noticeable that the great majority of phantasms
occur to a percipient who is alone. And this fact accords well with our
view that the subsidence of ordinary stimuli facilitates the development of
the telepathic impression.

But when we come to the small residue of cases where several persons
have been together when the phantasm occurred, we find a result equally
unexpected and perplexing. For it will be found that in nearly two cases
out of three the phantasm is perceived by all or most of the persons so
situated that they would have perceived it had it been an objective reality.
In about one case out of three it is perceived by one only of the persons
present. And, as a further complication, when perceived by more persons
than one, it is sometimes perceived more fully by some than by others ; —
both heard and seen, perhaps, by one, and only heard by another.

§3. Now this result seems at first sight equally inconsistent with
the theory of the telepathic impulse as generating these hallucinations,
and with the crude popular credence which attributes to " ghosts " some
sort of tenuous materiality. For in the one case we might expect that the
phantasm would rarely be perceptible to more than one person ; in the
other case that it would always be perceptible to all the persons present.
The popular view — to take that first — lies so far outside the pale
of any recognised scientific conceptions that strong evidence indeed
would be needed to reconcile us to it. We are sometimes asked to
believe that this body of ours — with its digestive system, &c., and all
its traces of physical evolution — is interpenetrated with a " meta-

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 279

organism " of identical shape and structure, and capable sometimes of
detaching itself from the solid flesh and producing measurable effects on
the material world. Now that material effects should be produced by
something which (like our own will), is only cognisable by us on its
psychical side is not in itself an absurd supposition, though we have little
evidence which goes to support it. But this hypothesis of a connate
molecular " meta-organism " is at once grotesque and entirely insufficient.
For it is precisely against this form of the ghost-hypothesis that the
difficulty as to the ghosts of clothes has overwhelming weight. The appari-
tion that stands before us, on this theory, is an objective thing ; it has
grown with our friend's growth, it is organic with his deathless vitality.
Are, then, his dead habiliments alive also in the spirit ? or how has the
meta-organism accreted to itself a meta-coat and meta-trousers ?

§ 4. But if we thus rule out of court the crudest explanation of a
collectively-witnessed apparition, our next attempt must plainly be to
explain it on the lines of telepathy, by extending in some way our
hypothesis of a phantasmogenetic impulse conveyed directly from mind to
mind. Now if A's phantom is witnessed by B and 0 together — and
witnessed, as we are assuming throughout, without intimation thereof
from one to the other by look or word — then it might seem simplest to
assume that a separate telepathic impression passed from A to B, and from
A to C, and was externalised by each of the percipients as a phantom of
his own shaping. It has been shown, however, in Chap. XVI1L, that
the recorded cases will not always admit of this hypothesis. C is some-
times a stranger to A, and it is almost impossible to suppose that, had it
not been for B's presence, he would have witnessed the phantom at all.
In this difficulty, Mr. Gurney inclines to the view that in such a case
the telepathic impression is primarily communicated from A to B, and
gives rise to a hallucination in B's mind ; and that this hallucination is
then telepathically communicated from B to the other person or persons
present. And this explanation, if we can accept it, seems to have the
advantage of introducing as little as possible of fresh hypothesis into the
psychic field.

§ 5. I do not, however, think that the evidence warrants us in pushing
our theory quite so far in this direction. I do not feel justified in assuming
that a mere hallucination — telepathically originated in the mind of B, the^
primary percipient — will be thus readily communicable, by a fresh tele-
pathic transfer, to the minds of other persons in local proximity. Hallu-
cinations, however caused, are in themselves a tolerably distinct class of
phenomena ; and, since we know of several kinds that are not telepathic

280 NOTE ON A SUGGESTED MODE OF

in origin, we shall do well to inquire whether these have shown themselves
communicable from the hallucine to his neighbours, without speech or
suggestion of any kind. And it so happens that a good deal of competent
observation has already been directed to this point. Folie a deux — the
communicability of insane delusions — has been for the last quarter of a
century a favourite topic of medical discussion.1 Now in order that folie
a deux should present a true parallel to the suggested infectiousness of
telepathic hallucinations, which we are here discussing, it would
be necessary to find cases where some vision or voice had been
propagated from one mind to another without any verbal suggestion
whatever. No such case, so far as I can find, is anywhere recorded ; and
no such case is reported to me by medical friends.2 The nearest case is
that of the Lochin family (see the first note below), but there the attack
of hallucinations was plainly of toxic origin, and though it ran much the
same course with each of the poisoned persons, there is even here no proof
that any one of them caught a definite hallucination from his neighbour's
mind.

§ 6. It may, however, be suggested that medical writers, not being
alive to the possibility of an unsuggested, or telepathic, infection, may
have neglected to observe it, and that therefore some part of the infection
for which they assume speech as of course the medium may in reality have
taken place without speech, by telepathic transfer. To meet this
point, let us consider what are the habitual conditions of the contagion
du delire,3 as the French somewhat loosely term it.

According to Lasegue and Falret (with whom the other authorities
virtually concur), the person thus infected (if not already a lunatic) must
be inferior in intelligence to the original lunatic, must generally be a
woman or a child, and must live long with the lunatic, apart from external
influences. Moreover, the character of the delusion must itself be more or

1 Besides some references given by Mr. Gurney, Vol. i., p. 458, see Brunet (Ann. Med.-
Psych., 1875, Vol. xiv., pp. 337-357), and the specially interesting case of the Lochin family
(Ann. MM. -Psych., 1882, Vol. ii.), reported by Dr. Reverchon; Les uns voientdes fantdmes,
des chats noirs et blancs, des serpents; its les montrent aux autrcs effares. " See also Dr.Savage's
" Cases of Contagiousness of Delusions " (Journal of Mental Science, 1880-1, Vol. xxvi.,
p. 563), and Dr. Kiernam (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, October, 1880), for the
communication of ideas of grandeur in asylums. I omit many minor references. In Dr.
Jaccoud's Diet, encycl. des sciences medicales the reader is significantly referred from Folie
A deux to Persecutions— the character of the great majority of these cases being thus
indicated. On the whole, Lasegue and Falret's essay ((Euvres de Lasegue, Vol. i., p. 732)
summarises the subject very completely. The latest work, Chpolianski's Analogies entre
la folie a deux et la suicide a deux, (Pans, 1885,) accords with what has been here said.

2 Dr. Lockhart Robertson has kindly made inquiry for me from some specialist
friends ; and neither he nor they are cognisant of any such case. Nor are the authorities
at Bethlem ; as, indeed, Dr. Savage's essay, above referred to, plainly indicates.

3 The word contagion reminds us of the old stories of second-sight, communicable by
the touch of the seer (see p. 189, note).

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 281

less reasonable ; it must rest on real facts in the past, or intelligible fears
or hopes for the future. The idea that a legacy has accrued, the idea that
neighbours are malignant, is gradually instilled into a sane mind by the
constant repetition of an untrue, but not conspicuously-absurd assertion.
But even where this delusion includes some sensory elements, I can find,
as I have already said, no evidence that any hallucinatory sight or sound
has ever been described independently by two persons as occurring at
the same moment. If, then, with all the predisposition that close relation-
ship can give, with all the dominance of the hallucination in the affected
mind, not even one other person seems ever to be telepathically
impressed thereby, we may hesitate to assume that a veridical hallucina-
tion should be capable of telepathic transference to several bystanders.

Neither in duration nor in apparent intensity can the veridical
hallucination claim to equal some of the morbid varieties. There are
instances where the same illusory figure has persisted for months or years.
Take, for instance, "Mr. Gabbage "—the persistent visionary tyrant of an
unhappy American gentleman, who was, at any rate at first, in a state of
undoubted sanity.1 Constantly though he appeared, distinctly though he
spoke, " Mr. Gabbage " was never seen or heard by anyone save the
original sufferer.

Again, it is probable that no other hallucinations can rival in sheer
intensity those which sometimes accompany the onset of an epileptifonn
attack. When the patient rushes furious through the room, which he sees
full of flames, striking at the imaginary demons who bar his passage, then
surely, if ever, the phantasies of the tumultuous brain might be expected
to imprint themselves on the bystander. But although the shock of
witnessing an epileptic fit will sometimes bring on a similar tit in patients
thereto disposed, there is, I believe, no evidence whatever that the specific
hallucination of the first sufferer ever communicates itself either to stable
or to unstable brains.

Once more ; there is a species of hallucination somewhat akin to
telepathic hallucinations — nay, which is itself sometimes induced tele-
pathically. I mean the hallucinations generated by the mesmeriser in the
mind of his subject. Popular credence, as Mr. Gurney and I have else-
where shown,2 has much exaggerated the mesmerist's power of influencing
his subject without verbal suggestion. But in a few cases — Mr. H. S.
Thompson's and Dr. Pierre Janet's,3 for instance — an effect seems to have

1 Se« M. Ribot's comments on this case of M. Ball's, Maladies de la Personnalite,
p. 111.

* Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. iii., p. 416.

3 See the Additional Chapter at the end of this volume. In the strange and remote
case of Councillor Wesermann (Vol. i., p. 102) it is not clear whether the distant "wilier"
was thinking at the time of both the persons to whom the phantasm of his creating appeared.

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been produced on a subject at a distance without previous suggestion ; an
action prompted or a hallucination provoked. Now, in no one instance
does it appear that the effect thus telepathically produced has extended
itself from the immediate subject to any other person.

§ 7. The analogies of morbid and of mesmeric hallucination are, then, as
ic seems, decidedly against its communicability. But these analogies are not
in themselves conclusive. Apart from the distinctively morbid hallucina-
tions of madness or epilepsy — on which physicians have almost exclusively
dwelt — there are occasional cases of isolated hallucinations occurring in
the experience of sane and healthy persons. It may be said that these
afford a closer parallel to our telepathic hallucinations. If it can be
shown that these are communicable, there will be some presumption that
our veridical phantoms may be propagated by psychical infection too.

Now, Mr. Gurney has made a collection, far larger than had been
previously attempted, of these casual hallucinations of the sane. His
collection of nearly 600 cases of this kind (exclusive, of course, of the
telepathic evidence in this book), when analysed with care, affords a
basis of induction on which a few broad conclusions, at least, may safely
be founded. All, however, that I mean to do here is to take one obvious
empirical division. Some of these casual hallucinations resemble veridical
hallucinations and some do not. In this latter class are included a
number of purely fantastic or truncated visions of human or animal forms
or faces, and visions of inanimate objects, patterns, &c. In the former
class come visions of persons known or unknown, voices, lights, &c.

Now it appears that the great majority of these casual hallucinations
are witnessed by one person only, other persons, if present, perceiving
nothing. But there are cases in which several persons have shared the
impression, and some of these cases Mr. Gurney has set forth in
Chap. XVIII. What lessons do they teach ?

The most important characteristic that I see in them is this. They
all of them belong to that class of casual hallucinations which at any rate
resemble the telepathic cases. There are no collective hallucinations of
truncated forms, of definite inanimate objects, or of patterns. They
all represent persons known or unknown, lights, or voices.

I will defer for the moment the consideration of some of these figures
or voices which are referred to dead persons. Taking those only which
are conceivably, though not provably, referable to persons living or in the
act of death, it seems to me that we have here just that kind of fringe of
ambiguous cases which we should expect to find surrounding the cases
where some distant agency is more clearly proved.

For if such a phenomenon as telepathy, such a cause or agency as

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 283

telergy, exists at all, we may surely suppose that it exists in many forms,
and manifests itself in many operations, of which we have not at present
any inkling whatever. While we may be able to reach a substantial
agreement as to what phenomena may be regarded as almost certainly due
to telepathy, we have no means at present of deciding positively what
phenomena are not so due.

This, therefore, is a case where the evidential and the theoretical
treatment of our subject cannot be made precisely to coincide. Mr.
Gurney's primary object has been, and rightly, to treat the evidential case
for telepathy with scrupulous fairness, to allow to chance-coincidence or to
mere subjective hallucination every incident which cannot establish a
strong claim to a supernormal character. So long as we are arguing the
question whether telepathy exists or no, this rigid method is plainly
needful. We must rest our argument on instances for which, taken
cumulatively, any explanation except telepathy is conspicuously
improbable.

But supposing the evidential point established, and that it is now not
the mere existence, but the nature and limits, of telepathy which we are
seeking to determine, we shall need to scrutinize our narratives in a some-
what different way. We shall have to consider not only whether there is
overwhelming probability that any given case is telepathic, but also whether
there is sufficient probability to oblige us to keep that explanation in view,
and to refrain from using the case in support of other theories. Thus (to
make my meaning clearer by an analogy) if it were our business to prove
the existence of volcanic islets, we should not be entitled to base that proof
on such doubtful instances as the much-debated islets of St. Paul. But,
the existence of volcanic islets once established, we must not hastily
exclude this dubious case from our category, or we may find that we are
committing ourselves to a far more questionable theory — that of a lost
Atlantis. Now the cases cited by Mr. Gurney as probably mere subjective
hallucinations shared by several persons are assuredly not cases from which
any argument for the operation of distant agency could be drawn. But
if such agency be once admitted as a vera causa, it seems to me to be safer
to ascribe these cases to its untraced and, so to say, casual operation, than
to support by them a theory of collective hallucination which may easily
be — and in other hands has been — pushed to a point at which it comes
into real collision with ordinary experience, and needlessly confuses the
canons of testimony.

We must remember that these phantasms do not occur to please us, or
to satisfy our expectations, but rather (so far as we can tell) in accordance
with some law affecting the psychical energies of the dying person. We
need not, therefore, assume that our phantasmal visitors will always be

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familiar or interesting figures. It is quite conceivable that persons may
appear to us whom we have wholly forgotten ; and in fact in some of the
cases in this book the identification of the figure has only followed upon
subsequent information and reflection. Again, if, as certain cases seem to
indicate, locality goes for a great deal in attracting or manifesting the
phantasm, then figures may appear to us which we have never seen, but
which represent some dying person who is attached to the house in which
we live. And suggestions such as these, though at present merely specula-
tive, seem to me to form an explanation of Mr. Gurney's cases less violent
than that which calls on us to suppose that a mere casual subjective
hallucination has a self-propagating power which hallucinations of an
intenser and more lasting order do not appear to possess.

§ 8. Another class of cases which Mr. Gurney has advanced as illustrat-
ing the transferability of hallucinations consists of the occurrence to two
or more persons of phantasms ostensibly connecting themselves with some
person who is actually dead. I do not wish here to give any positive
opinion as to the origin of such appearances. The question of phantasms
of the dead introduces a whole series of evidential and metaphysical
difficulties with which I am not here prepared to deal. But since we have
expressly excluded such problems from the scope of this work, have
expressly stated that our evidence is at present insufficient to guide us to a
distinct opinion thereon, I cannot admit that any selection from these
narratives can at present add force to the contention that purely illusory
hallucinations, corresponding in no way to any reality outside the primary
percipient, are readily communicable to the other persons present.

Since, then, an inquiry so widely-reaching as Mr. Gurney's collection
of hallucinations has failed, in my view, to produce any clear cases of the
communicability of illusory (or falsidical ) hallucinations with which to
supply the absence of any evidence thereof in previous records, I am
driven to doubt whether such communicability can be safely assumed as a
probable explanation of our cases where a veridical phantasm has been
seen or heard by several persons at the same time.

§ 9. And having thus criticised my colleague's suggestions, I feel bound
to produce a theory of my own, which, though confessedly unproveii, may
have the advantage of directing attention towards what seems to me the
nodus of our present inquiry, and of suggesting experiments which may
help us to a truer solution. I begin by following a clue which suggests
itself at a very early stage of the experimental investigation.

Take the simplest possible case of thought-transference. A thinks of
the word " cat " and B divines it. Now, here our habit is to call A the

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 285

agent and B the percipient ; terms which are practically the simplest, but
which may have seemed to imply that all the activity involved in the
phenomenon lay in A's tension of thought in keeping " cat " before his
mind, and that B's rdle was a mere passive waiting for the telepathic
impulse which carries the word or idea from A's mind into his own. And
as we extend our series from the trivial experimental instances to the
massive spontaneous instances of telepathy, we find the exhibition of
energy on the agent's part — the receptive tranquillity on the percipient's
part — becoming more and more conspicuous. When A, for example, is
dying in battle, and B is asleep and dreams that he sees A dying, the
psychical activity of the one, the psychical passivity of the other, seem to
reach their maximum.

Let us try, however, to look a little deeper beneath the surface.
When A thinks of cat and B guesses the word " out of A's mind," with-
out the help of speech or gesture, then B, whether passive or not, is at
any rate playing the part which requires the rarer qualifications. In a
sense, no doubt, he is merely perceiving, but I need not say that percep-
tion itself is a form of activity. If we perceive more things than an
oyster perceives, it is not because we are more passive than the oyster, but
more active ; because activities of our ancestors' and our own have
developed in us eyes which now discern distant objects with an effort so
slight that we are scarcely aware of it. Similarly with the telepathic
experiment. When B discerns the word cat, which most of us, with only
his opportunities, could not discern by any amount of waiting and
passivity, we must surely conclude that B is exercising some kind of
capacity which we cannot exercise. This power, plainly, is not of what
we term a voluntary kind ; it is not guided by B's normal or primary
stream of consciousness. But (as I have tried elsewhere to show) there
is reason to suppose that our normal consciousness represents no more
than a slice of our whole being. We all know that there exist stt6-conscious
and wwconscious operations of many kinds ; both organic, as secretion,
circulation, &c., which are in a sense below the operations to which our
minds attend ; and also mental, as the recall of names, the development
of ideas, &c., which are on much the same level as the operations to which
our minds attend, but which for various reasons remain in the background
of our mental prospect. Well, besides these sub-conscious and unconscious
operations, I believe that super-conscious operations also are going on within
us ; operations, that is to say, which transcend the limitations of ordinary,
faculties of cognition, and which yet remain — not below the threshold — but
rather above the upper fiorizon of consciousness, and illumine our normal
experience only in transient and clouded gleams.

This is not the place to marshal the arguments which support this

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thesis. But the thesis itself seems almost implied in the very conception
of thought-transference. For in thought-transference we have two
psychical phenomena, connected by an unknown chain of causation, which
is certainly supernormal in character, and which contains at least some
unconscious links.

§ 10. Let us, then, pursue this notion of some supernormal activity on
the percipient's part. Let us treat it in the same way as we have treated
the notion of the supernormal activity of the agent. We have credited
the agent, A, in the " cat " experiment, with a certain power of impressing
his thought on other minds. And we have proceeded to inquire how far
— in voluntary experiment or in spontaneous emergence— this power can
be found to go, — how complex the transmitted image may be. So
far as voluntary experiment went, the answer has been somewhat
doubtful, for self-transmissive projections of a hallucinatory image of
oneself — such as those recorded in Vol. I., Chap. III. — have always,
as it would seem, taken place during the agent's trance or slumber.
The spontaneous cases, on the other hand, have been very numerous ;
cases, that is to say, where A, undergoing some shock or crisis, acts
psychically in such a manner as to impress his presence on the minds
of distant men.

Let us, then, ask similar questions with regard to the supernormal
activity of the percipient. We have seen him thus far divining a word
on which the agent's thought was concentrated, guessing a card on which
the agent's eyes were fixed. Are there cases, experimental or spontaneous,
where we find him doing more than this ? sharing not a single idea only
but a whole complex of ideas and perceptions in another man's mind ? or
supernormally recognising an object on which no " agent's " eyes are
looking 1 The answer to these questions would involve the whole evidence
for induced or spontaneous clairvoyance. For the word clairvoyance may
be used to indicate many forms of supersensory perception ; of which one
is what we may call telepathic clairvoyance, where the clairvoyant seems
to be seeing with the eyes, perceiving with the senses, recalling with the
memory, of another person ; and another is what we may call independent
clairvoyance, where the clairvoyant seems to visit scenes, or to discern
objects, without needing that those scenes or objects should form part of
the perception or memory of any known mind.

The topic of clairvoyance, though unavoidable in the present discus-
sion, is open to serious objections from which telepathy, in our view, is free.
For we have not ourselves succeeded in making any experiments which
corroborate that induction of clairvoyance in sensitive subjects which
many writers have alleged. And the light which our new knowledge

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 287

of telepathy throws on that testimony must doubtless modify it greatly —
must reduce the scattered testimony which exists for independent clair-
voyance to a bulk much smaller than its advocates have claimed. But,
nevertheless, speaking not for my colleagues but for myself, I do consider
the evidence for clairvoyance, both telepathic and independent, both
induced and spontaneous, to be adequate to justify belief ; l and, holding
this view, I feel bound to take clairvoyance into account in any theoretic
discussion of supernormal phenomena.

§ 11. And if we thus take into account the evidence for clairvoyance,
we find a stream of new light let in on our conception of the modus
operandi of telepathic perception. For it is a characteristic of the clair-
voyant power that it is generally exercised when the normal powers of
sensory percipience are in abeyance, during natural somnambulism, during
morbid conditions of trance, or during the sleep-waking state induced by
mesmeric passes. It seems as though this supersensory faculty assumed
activity in an inverse ratio to the activities of common life.

Nor is this the only instructive analogy which the records of clairvoy-
ance suggest. The mesmeric process, which appears to be the most effective
way of inducing the clairvoyant state, does not consist of a mere inhibition
of ordinary psychical activities. Whatever may be its true nature, it in-
volves, at any rate, a rapport between the operator and the subject, a
specialised relation between two minds, which sometimes seems to serve as
the starting-point for a supernormal percipience on the part of the
mesmerised subject which presently transcends the scope or content of the
interrogator's mind altogether.

Let us return, then, to the consideration of our veridical hallucinations,
bearing in mind these two peculiarities of clairvoyant perception ; its
exercise in apparently inverse ratio to the activity of normal faculties, and
its capacity for being stimulated or evoked by some kind of psychical
influence directed towards the clairvoyant subject from another mind.

§ 1 2. And we shall, perhaps,first observe how much of illumination is thus
cast upon a large and perplexing class of telepathic dreams, those, namely,
in which B is made aware of A's state, not as if by an entry of A's
phantom into his bedchamber, but as if by an excursion of his own into
the room where A is actually dying.

Dreams, as Mr. Gurney has amply explained, form only a very sub
sidiary part of the evidential case which we put forward. Taken alone,

1 In the present state of the subject, I hold that a writer avowing such belief is
bound to show cause for his apparent credulity ; and this I shall hope to do on the
earliest practicable occasion.

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they could hardly prove telepathy ; rather they are themselves shown to
be telepathic by the analogies of the more cogent evidence drawn from
waking hours. But though evidentially a minor branch of our subject,
they are, nevertheless, among the most instructive of psychical phenomena.
They show us phantasms in the making ; they initiate us into sub-conscious
processes of which waking hallucinations are, as it were, the final output or
manufactured result.

But when we come to scrutinize the details of veridical dreams we find
that amongst many where fantastic elements are commingled with the
true, as though a central conception were embodying itself in the imagery
which it found readiest to hand, there are some dreams where the scene
seems to be described without such admixture, and much as it might have
appeared to a real spectator.

Dr. A. K. Young's dream (case 142) is closely analogous to a case of
so-called "travelling clairvoyance." Locality, personages, and actions
seem to have been completely realised, and the violent blows delivered by
Dr. Young as he lay asleep in bed are the precise parallel of the shivering,
sweating, &c., frequently recorded of clairvoyants who are witnessing
distant scenes of heat or cold. Noteworthy in the same sense is Mrs.
Green's dream (case 138), where it seems as though the link of kinship,
though without personal acquaintance, had directed the sleeper's
clairvoyant vision to the scene of sudden death. In these cases it
seems to me that to talk of the drowning women as the agents who affected
Mrs. Green, the wounded tenant as the agent who affected Dr. A. K.
Young, tends to obscure the real nature of the occurrence ; the deeper
view being that the so-called percipient was in fact the agent or active
personage, too ; and that the concurrent crisis of danger or death did but
determine the direction, or the remembrance, of activities which the
sleeper's unconscious self was exercising in the abeyance of waking
function.

And if we follow up this hint, we shall note that in most cases where
even a waking percipient is conscious of a distant scene, the sensation is-
accompanied by something like a momentary abstractedness, or even
actual somnolence.1 In Canon Warburton's case (No. 108) the sudden percep-
tion of a distant crisis, apparently occurring at that moment, wakes the
sleeper from his doze And if the various expressions used by the percipients
of these clairvoyantly witnessed scenes, whether we have classed them as
awake or asleep at the time, be compared together, we shall find that they
agree in describing the experience as something unlike either dream-
presence or waking presence in the suddenly-revealed locality, as giving a

1 See, for instance, cases 24, 63, 109.

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 289

sense of a translation of the centre of consciousness, of a psychical
excursion into a definite region of space.

Such expressions need imply nothing more than the manner in which
this sudden extension of the psychical purview represents itself in the
forms of ordinary thought. But they may aid in putting us on the track
of a question which is, in my view, of profound importance. Is there
evidence of any percipience on the part of others which corresponds to
the clairvoyant's own sense of presence and action in the scene which is
common to his mind and theirs ? Readers of Chap. XVII. will have
perceived that there is such evidence ; and although the cases there given
are not numerous, there are reasons (as I hope presently to show) why
but a very small fraction of such experiences is ever likely to come to our
knowledge.

Meantime, we must observe that in these reciprocal cases the condi-
tion and sensations of the percipient, who thus becomes an agent also — the
clairvoyant who is himself discerned as a phantom in the scene where he
conceives himself to be — are precisely similar to the condition and sensa-
tions of the clairvoyant whose vision affects no second person. Our agent,
too, is in a fit of abstraction, or dreaming, or plunged in stupor as death
draws nigh, when he produces on others the impression correlative to the
impression which is being produced on himself.

§ 13. Correspondently with clairvoyant perception there may be phantas-
mogenetic efficacy ; — this, as it seems to me, is a sound induction from our
recorded cases, and an induction which, if thoroughly grasped, will modify
profoundly our comprehension and classification of the evidence before us.
For, speaking broadly, our " phantasms of the living " will consequently
tend to arrange themselves into two main classes, classes which are them-
selves linked in more ways than one ; namely, the class in which the
phantasm may be considered as the emergence or externalisation, in and by
the percipient's mind, of an impression transmitted from a distant agent,
and the class in which the phantasm may be considered as corresponding to
the conception in the mind of a clairvoyant percipient, — who is thus also an
agent, — of his own presence and action in a scene which he shares with the
persons who are corporeally present therein.

§ 14. And thus we have reached a point at which what seemed the
unique difficulty involved in collective hallucinations is not indeed
explained, but is seen as merely a special case which we can subsume under
a higher generalisation. What I mean is this ; that if the appearance, say,
of Mr. Newnham to Mrs. Newnham (case 35) or of Mrs. Smith to her friend
(case 306) is held proximately to depend on their own perception of their
VOL. n. U

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own presence in the scene where their phantasm is observed, it becomes
then a subsidiary question whether only one, or some, or the whole group
of the persons of whose consciousness that scene forms a part, perceive
such phantasm or no. And this subsidiary question, again, resolves itself
into a special case of the larger question which meets us throughout the
whole inquiry, — the question as to the causes of varying idiosyncratic
receptiveness of phantasmal impressions. There will be no need to
assume, as Mr. Gurney is inclined to do, a direct infection of hallucination
from one primary percipient to neighbouring minds. Still less shall we
need to explain such cases as Nos. 242 and 355 by the strange hypothesis
that an idea, partly or altogether latent and undeveloped in the mind
of the primary percipient, did nevertheless propagate itself from
thence and emerge into full externalisation for a person to whom the
distant agent was wholly unknown. For we shall be able to conceive it as
possible that all the persons in the room may be equally favourably
situated for the discernment of that phantasmal correlate which repre-
sents or accompanies, in some way unknown to us, the clairvoyant
percipience of the distant and dying man.

§ 15. At the cost of some cumbrousness of language, I have been
careful to express my hypothesis in exclusively psychical — as opposed to
physical — terms. I desire that the reader should clearly distinguish it from
any view which implies a material or objective presence, of however
tenuous a kind. I shall not, indeed, commit myself to the assertion that
any such presence is impossible; or that there may not be some intermediate
view between what seems to me the gross conception of a molecular meta-
organism, already alluded to, and the purely psychical agency which is
all that I postulate here. The line between the "material" and the
" immaterial," as these words are commonly used, means little more than
the line between the phenomena which our senses or our instruments can
detect or register, and the phenomena which they can not. And the whole
problem of the relation of the psychical to the physical — of thought
and will to space and matter — is forced upon our attention with startling
vividness from the very beginning of this inquiry. At every step we
find that familiar speculative difficulties assume a new reality ; and that
•dilemmas which the metaphysician can evade, and the physicist ignore,
present to the psychical researcher an imperative choice of one or the
other horn.

In the present discussion, however, such difficulties can still be
postponed. I shall confine myself to pointing out that since some even of
the phantasms which are perceived by more than one person escape the
perception of one or more of the bystanders, they cannot be objective in

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 291

any ordinary sense. And while they are regarded as entirely psychical
incidents, the differentia of the view here advanced is still, I think,
sufficiently plain. I treat the respective hallucinations of each member
of the affected group as each and all directly generated by a conception in
a distant mind — a conception which presents itself to that mind as
though its centre of activity were translated to the scene where the group
are sitting, and which presents itself to each member of that group as
though their hallucinations did not come to them incoherently or
independently, but were diffused from a " radiant point," or phantasmo-
genetic focus, corresponding with that region of space where the
distant agent conceives himself to be exercising his supernormal
perception.

§ 16. This view is at any rate definite enough to suggest certain
experiments which might test its probability in comparison with the view
which assumes one primary percipient and a transference of hallucination,
as though by a second telepathic process, from that primary percipient
to his neighbours in space.

The most important experiment would be one which there is
perhaps small chance of making ; for it depends on the coolness and
preparedness of several persons collectively witnessing a veridical
hallucination. It might, for instance, have been carried out by Mrs.
Elgee and Miss D. in the case (No. 348) which Mr. Gurney cites as one
where " the flashing of the hallucination from one of the percipients
to the other seems specially well illustrated, since the figure which
appeared was one which the second percipient had never seen in the
flesh." In that case we have no independent account from Miss D.,
and the details are insufficient to show the relation between the
hallucinations of the two persons. But let us assume, for the sake of
argument, that a similar incident occurs to persons prepared to analyse
it ; that A's phantom appears to B, who knows him, and also to 0, who
is in the room with B, but never saw A.

I .will arrange an account of the imaginary scene in two ways ; first,
so as to illustrate Mr. Gurney's " flashing of the hallucination from one of
the percipients to the other " ; and, secondly, so as to illustrate my own
view of the diffusion of the hallucination to both minds similarly, in a
manner conditioned by the agent's conception of himself as present in a
scene in which the two percipients are sitting.

(1) B sees the figure first, and thus develops the hallucinatory figure of
A, clothing it with the dress in which he has most frequently seen A. 0
discerns the figure after B has done so, and either more vaguely or in the same
garb in which B discerns it, or with peculiarities which may be traced to

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O's own mind ; at any rate, not introducing true points of resemblance
to A, which have not been observed by B. Moreover, if B's hallucination
represents A as facing him, C's hallucination takes a similar attitude,
although C may be so placed with reference to the figure that, had it been
A in proprid persond, C would have seen, not A's full face, but his
profile or back. There is no distinct agreement between B and 0 as to
the point of space which the phantom seemed to occupy, or as to its
successive movements, or the time and mode of its disappearance. Such
details as these, if occurring in the manner here suggested, would favour
the supposition that C's hallucination was not the result of any direct
transfer from A, but rather of a transfer from B of the hallucination
to which B's mind had given shape.

(2) Now let us suppose that these little incidents occur in just the
opposite manner. C perceives the phantom before B does, and perceives it
with characteristic details of garb and appearance, some of which B fails to
note. Moreover, when B and C are so placed that C would see the
phantom's back, and B the phantom's face, were the phantom a real person
in the place where B sees it, then they do see different aspects of the
phantom accordingly. And they agree as to every detail of its garb, so
far as observed, and as to its apparent position in space, its movements,
and the mode of its disappearance. If the details of the hallucination were
found to follow this type, there would seem to be strong reason for suppos-
ing that the impression on C 's mind was not (so to say) reflected from
B's, but that both alike corresponded to a more or less detailed, definite,
and persistent conception on A's own part of his presence and action in
the scene where his friend and the stranger were sitting. In that case
the manner or distinctness with which the phantom was discerned by B
and C respectively would depend on their relative power of supernormal
percipience, — their psychical permeability, — though it will still be presum-
able that B's previous rapport with A, which has probably determined the
direction which A's clairvoyant perception has taken, may also predispose
or enable B to discern the phantom on some occasions when C cannot
do so. On the other hand, if C's power of supernormal percipience greatly
exceed B's, C may discern the phantom, though of a stranger, when B fails
to discern it, though of a friend, as in cases 242 and 355, above
mentioned.

§ 17. The occasions on which such observations as these are possible
are likely to be almost as rare as eclipses. But, in the meantime, we may,
at any rate, practise (so to say) with smoked glass. We have now the
means of actually producing hallucinations at will in certain subjects by
hypnotic suggestion, and a careful arrangement of conditions may throw

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 293

light on the modes of communicability of hallucination from one mind to
another.

I will take first the simplest case, and will suppose that I am communi-
cating a hallucination to several hypnotised subjects by direct suggestion.
I say to the first : " There is a playbill on the wall ; write down the
name of the play advertised, but do not show it to anyone." He sees the
imaginary playbill at my suggestion, and his own mind supplies the title
of the play — say Hamlet. I simultaneously, or just afterwards, make the
same suggestion to other subjects. Now if all of them see Hamlet
advertised, the special form in which the first subject shaped his hallu-
cination has probably influenced the rest. Even if they see Othello,
Macbeth, &c., there has perhaps been a communication of the idea of
Shakespeare. But if they see Our Boys, The Private Secretary, &c., then
the specific form which the first subject's hallucination assumed has not
exercised a shaping power over the impulses to hallucination which I have
communicated to the other subjects.

Again, take a case of deferred hallucination, as when Professor Beaunis
of Nancy told Mdlle. A., in the hypnotic trance, that she would see
him call on her on January 1st at 10 a.m. Let a similar anticipatory idea
be again impressed on Mdlle. A, and let it be provided that other persons,
known to be susceptible, shall be in Mdlle. A's company when the hallu-
cination falls due. It can then be seen whether they " catch it from her,"
so to say, by telepathic infection. Or if they fail to do so, the trans-
ference might be facilitated as follows. Mdlle. A might be led to expect
Professor Beaunis' visit in a special dress, carefully impressed on her. The
others might simply be told that the Professor would call at the hour
determined. It might then be seen whether the hallucination which
had been suggested to them in a comparatively vague form were
rendered definite by infection from Mdlle. A's clearer perception of the
phantasmal visitant, so that all alike saw him in the dress announced
to Mdlle. A.

The subjects on whom such experiments as these can be attempted
with success are at present few in number, and almost exclusively French.
But the methodical zeal with which a group of French physicians are now
pursuing this form of research renders it likely that fresh light will soon
be shed on the genesis and development of hallucinatory percepts. Such
theorising, therefore, as I am here attempting need not be premature, if
it serves to suggest experiment, and to guide observation.

§ 18. But those who have followed me thus far will find that a further
reflection is here naturally suggested. If in cases of collective hallucination
we have seen reason to conjecture that there has been, not a mere series of

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telepathic transferences of impression, but a presentation as a quasi-
percept to several minds of a distant agent's conception of himself as
present among them by a kind of psychical translation, then we can
hardly suppose that this explanation is applicable to collective cases alone.
The accident that some indifferent person shared with the primary friend
the perception of the phantasm may enlighten us as to the mode in which
that phantasm was generated, but cannot have itself determined that mode.
Can we decide, then, for which of the apparitions seen by one person
only our newly-suggested method of origination may most plausibly be
invoked ?

Much, I think, might be learnt from reviewing the whole series of our
phantasms, while keeping in view the analogy of the alleged cases of
experimental clairvoyance in the same way as the analogy of experimental
telepathy has been kept in view in the preceding chapters. But such a
task must be postponed till the evidence for clairvoyance itself shall have
been subjected to a searching analysis. All that I can attempt here is
to draw attention to two problems, already repeatedly touched on by Mr.
Gurney, but capable of being discussed with profit from several points of
view. I speak of the apparent garb and symbolism of phantasms, and of
their attraction to special localities.

§ 19. The question of the clothes of ghosts — or the ghosts of clothes —
is one which presents the relation between the material and the immaterial
under a specially grotesque aspect. Theories which attribute any kind of
materiality to the "White Lady " or " Grey Lady " herself, are apt to get
inextricably entangled in her shadowy muslin. And apart from any definite
theorising, the frock-coat or the flowered dressing-gown of the " spiritual
visitant," has seemed to many minds to destroy his dignity and interest —
to be painfully incongruous with pure existences and a noumenal world.
On the other hand, I need hardly, at this point, explain that on the hy-
pothesis advanced in this book, this very mundaneness of the apparition
is precisely what was to be expected. For veridical hallucinations — like
morbid hallucinations, though in a different sense — are the outcome of
human minds ; the form in which my friend's phantasm presents itself
to me has been stamped thereon either by my friend's mind or my own.
And it therefore would be strange if I phantasmally saw the dying
man unclothed, — as I have never seen him in life ; if he, in his last
moments, pictured himself as he has never hitherto pictured himself in
colloquy with his friends.

But granting the almost unavoidable supposition that the phantom will
appear clothed — and clothed in some such way as either agent's or perci-
pient's mind can suggest — questions remain which are among the most

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 295

important and the most difficult with which we have to deal. The clothes
of apparitions are like the cartouches of Egyptian kings — they are hiero-
glyphs, in part seemingly arbitrary, in part obviously symbolical, which
we must compare and decipher before we can arrange our processional
figures by date and dynasty. For the most part these phantoms remain but
for a moment, and are gone without speech or action before their astonished
spectator has recovered from the shock of their approach. Sometimes
their faces present some change or particularity, as of hair or beard, of
pallor or injury, which in some degree identifies the moment of time,
past or present, which that phantasmal visage tends to reproduce. But
often such traces fail us. The witness gazes, not on some scarred and
mangled form — Priamiden laniatum corpore toto — but on the unchanged
aspect of a familiar friend. For most observers such recognition is enough,
as it is enough for the devout worshipper to recognise in a picture the
Madonna's face. Too soon the vision disappears — iterum crudelia retro
Fata vacant — and what is left is the shock of loss, the memory of consola-
tion. It is from no want of sympathy with those primary emotions that
we must urge on the readers of this book the imperative need, should
occasion be offered to them, of a minuter and calmer observation. Every
detail of the phantasmal appearance has some meaning ; and the points
which the spectator accepts as subordinate and unimpressive may contain
clues sought elsewhere in vain. Thus — to come at once to my present pur-
pose— it is usual for a witness to say "he appeared to me in the dress he
habitually wore, and in which I knew him." In one sense these two
clauses mean the same thing. But which of them is the really effective
one ? If A's phantom wears a black coat, is that because A wore a black
coat, or because B was accustomed to see him in one ? If A had taken
to wearing a brown coat since B saw him in the flesh, would A's phantom
wear to B's eyes a black coat or a brown ? Or would the dress which A
actually wore at the moment of death dominate, as it were, and supplant
phantasmally the costumes of his ordinary days ?

Those who have followed the cases cited in this book, and Mr. Gurney's
comments thereon, will know that the answer to these questions is neither
uniform nor clear. It is seldom that we can trust the percipient's memory
of the details of his vision, and even when these details have been carefully
noted their lesson is not easy to decipher.

We have, of course, as a starting point, the known fact that a man
may have a purely subjective hallucination, and may clothe it in almost
any fashion, — introducing items of dress which have never been
consciously familiar to his mind. We may naturally begin, then, by
assuming that, unless evidence to the contrary be forthcoming, it is from
the percipient's mind that the dress or other imagery of the phantom is

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drawn. Let us see whether there are any cases where this seems clearly
indicated by the particulars of the dress itself.

Suppose that the dying A appears to B, habited in hat and coat,
though in point of fact he is in bed at the time. Must we not here say
that B's mind has furnished the setting of the figure, and that nothing
beyond the mere impression of a personality comes from A himself ?

No ; this deduction would be insecure. For it assumes that if the
agent projects a developed phantom of himself, — a conception of himself,
that is to say, which B's mind externalises as a phantom, — he will
necessarily project it as though clad in the garments which he is wearing
at the time. But we have no grounds for assuming this. Just as B may
imagine A as wearing a familiar greatcoat, so may A imagine himself as
wearing that coat, whatever be his actual dress at the time.

Suppose that we dream of calling on a friend. In most cases we
dream of ourselves as in ordinary walking attire. It is only rarely that
we dream of entering a drawing-room in tiefem neglige, as the Germans
put it, — an obscure sense of one's actual condition entering, with
disastrous incoherence, into the feebly co-ordinated story of one's
dream.

Now, if we are comparing these veridical hallucinations to
objectified dreams, we must at least allow for the chance of the dream
being the agent's own ; we must not assume that it is always— so to say —
dreamt for him by the person to whom he appears. Whatever the agent's
actual dress at the time, all the cases where he appears merely in his
usual costume must be set aside as neutral. "We cannot press them to
prove the origin of the figure in either the one or the other mind.

Is there, then, any feature to which we can point as undoubtedly due
to the workings of the percipient's mind ? anything in the associations of
the dress ? or in the special symbolism of the apparition ? It is plain that
associations attaching to A's dress must be common to A as well as to B.
Suppose that B saw the dying A habited in a coat which A wore at B's
wedding, or at some other epochal moment in B's life. It must still be
remembered that that same moment was epochal to A also, in so far as his
relation to B was concerned, and that its conscious or unconscious memory
may influence A's conception of himself as bidding B a last farewell.
Similarly, a man who recalls his acts of homage to Royalty vaguely feels
himself in Court dress ; a man who imagines himself talking to a hunting
acquaintance has a slight sense — what is called a " phantom " sense — of
being on horseback.

And this ambiguity, I think, attaches to the few cases in which, as
Mr. Gurney urges, the "ghosts of old clothes," in which the phantom
appears, indicate the percipient's memory as the source of that investiture.

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 297

In Colonel and Mrs. Holland's case (201), a scrutiny of the dates and facts
given will show that we have no reason to regard Ramsay's clothes as old, —
as otherwise than still the suit in which he would be likely to imagine
himself as calling on a former mistress. In case 200, a brother delirious
in Australia, and fancying himself at home, appears to his sister
on the lawn, " dressed as he usually was when he came home from
London, not as he was when he left home, nor as he could be in Australia,
nor as I had ever seen him when walking in the garden." Surely all that
this dress implied was the idea of a traveller's home-coming, which was at
any rate the dominant one in the brother's ravings. Had it been his
wonted garden costume, then to my mind the dress, though still
ambiguous, would have looked more probably referable to the sister's
shaping imagination.

In a third and fourth case, (No. 202, and p. 546, second note,) there
is an admixture of unexplained grotesqueness, (the lady in a carriage, the
boy " enclosed, as it were, in a dark cellar "), which seems to remove
these cases into the category next to be considered, namely, where the
phantasmal figure is accompanied by symbolism, whose origin we have to
ascribe to one or the other mind. Such symbolism, as Mr. Gurney has
pointed out, is usually referable to some " mental habit or tradition,"
which is probably common to both the minds concerned. One can, of
course, imagine a case where the symbolism should be such as the
percipient's mind alone would be likely to think of ; as if, for instance, the
" thousands of angels as tight as they could be packed," which (in case
207) are seen surrounding a departed Christian friend, had formed the
symbolic escort of a pronounced Agnostic.

§ 20. But in default of such narratives as this, the cases where the in-
fluence of the percipient's idiosyncrasy seems most marked are those where
the same percipient has a recurrent symbolical dream, coincident on each
occasion with a death or other marked occurrence. We have a few such
cases, but in the most remarkable of them (No. 131) the form of the dream
is not exactly idiosyncratic, but rather takes on a form with which students
of folk-lore are already familiar. The traditions of folk-lore, it may
be remarked, form a kind of endemic symbolism, in which both morbid and
veridical hallucinations tend to clothe themselves. In some cases we have
found a community of Celtic fishermen, or the like, so deeply impregnated
with traditions of this kind that we cannot accept their accounts of corpse-
candles, &c., though supported by apparent coincidences of fact, as of real
evidential value. We are obliged, that is to say, to treat such a community
as subject to casual hallucinations, which detract from the importance of
such coincidences with objective fact as do from time to time occur. It is

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only in some of the remoter regions of Wales and Scotland that we have
found superstitions of this sort active and definite. But the tendency to the
recurrence of some special symbolism — symbolism of which the percipient
may never remember to have heard — among the dreams of educated
persons, reminds us sometimes of the sporadic endemicity of certain
traditions of folk-lore, of which this very tendency may be itself the
proximate cause.

In our present collection, however, we have included very little of such
symbolism, and to what there is we can assign no certain origin in agent's
or percipient's mind.

§ 21. On the whole, then, it seems that we have few indications in the
dress or other surroundings of fully-developed veridical phantoms which
point conclusively to an origin in the percipient's mind. Are there instances,
on the other hand, which yield the reverse indication ? that is, where the
dress or imagery seems manifestly traceable to the mind of the agent
himself ?

Such indication may conceivably be given in two main ways. The
agent's dress or aspect at the moment may be phantasrnally repro-
duced ; or there may be symbolism, not vague or traditional in character,
but plainly adapted to communicate some information known to the agent
alone.

Of the first of these classes the reader will have observed a good many
examples. There are, first of all, the phantoms in night-dress. In one or
two cases (e.g., No. 563,) these are apparitions of persons whom the
percipient knows to be dying, and the white dress might, therefore, be
suggested by the percipient's mind. But in other cases (see especially No.
214) there is no expectation of the agent's death, and the dress astonishes
the percipient by its incongruity.

Still more remarkable are the cases where the dying man appears in a
dress which he is actually wearing at the moment, although it is not such
as is usually associated with death-beds. The case of Dr. Bowstead (No.
212), commented on by Mr. Gurney, may serve as a type of this class. In
such a case as that (to anyone who believes that more than mere chance is
involved), it must surely seem more probable that the dress of the phantom
was the creation of the dying man's mind rather than of the mind of the
boy to whom that phantom appeared. And it is observable that while
such evidence as points to the percipient's part in shaping these figures is
indirect and inferential, the evidence which points to their full-blown
projection from the agent's mind is often as direct and unmistakeable as
any evidence on such a point can be expected to be.

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 299

§ 22. Next as regards the symbolism which accompanies the figure.
The commonest case of symbolism — if such it is to be called — consists in
the wet clothes of the apparition of a drowned man. There is possibly
something in death by asphyxiation which (as it seems to revive past
memories with unusual vividness) predisposes also to telepathic action.
At any rate, we have a good many of such cases, and there seems almost
always to be some specific indication of the manner of death. " Dripping
with water," "his hair wet," "pale, sad, and wet," "looking half-
drowned," such are the phrases which recur. The distinctive mark here
is very simple — it may be said to be nothing more than a translation into
visibility of the idea " He is drowning." We might, therefore, suppose
that it had perhaps originated in the percipient's mind. But this view is
rendered less plausible by the cases where the apparition presents more
detailed marks of accident, change, or disease, as the wound on the chest
in case 210, the trembling and pallor in case 527, the grey hair in case 194,
and the complex and partly symbolical aspect of the phantom in case 25.
It is worth remarking that " N. J. S. " (case 28), who looked carefully at
the details of his apparition, is of opinion that the walking-stick which his
friend held (but which " N. J. S." never remembered to have seen him
using) was symbolical, and meant to imply departure and a farewell. The
case (No. 514) of the lady seen with a lock of hair cut off and a " peculiar
light upon her," presents a somewhat similar mixture of true reproduction
and symbolism ; and the extraordinary narrative of Sengireef (No. 449),
which throughout resembles an extravagant dream, shows that the
phantom presented some details (of beard, &c.) which were true and
unknown to the percipient. My view in that instance is that the dream
in reality was not Madame Aksakoff's, but Sengireef 's ; that its insane
strangeness was the reflection of the confused clairvoyance of a delirious
monomaniac. With this last case I should compare No. 349 : the difference
being that here, instead of the sombre wildness of the fanatic, we have the
devout aspiration of the Catholic boy. I should explain, that is to say, the
figure of St. Stanislaus as the reflected embodiment of a dying dream.

I have said enough, perhaps, to enable the reader to form his own
judgment on this point from the cases recorded in these volumes. On the
one hand, if he accepts our general argument as to the connection of purely
subjective and veridical hallucinations, he will recognise that there is a
certain & priori likelihood that the details of the hallucination will be
found to emanate from the percipient's mind. And he may be disposed
to follow Mr. Gurney in classing dubious cases by this presumption ; in
ranking as exceptional the narratives where the details seem plainly
derived from the mind of the agent. If, on the other hand, he views the
cases which I have mentioned (and many others which resemble them) in

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the light in which I have tried to place them, he may recognise that when
the apparition does present any distinct details, these are almost always
such as the agent's mind might most naturally have supplied ; and that
this fact suggests a doubt as to whether there may not be something
more than a simple telepathic impulse involved ; — whether the obscurer
agency of clairvoyance must not here be invoked ; — an analogy
suggesting that certain modes of supernormal percipience and self-
realisation in a distant scene may produce upon the persons placed in that
scene an impression as of the actual presence of the clairvoyant among them,
in a manner corresponding to his own momentary conception of himself.

§ 23. Connected, in a certain way, with the symbolism of which we
have been speaking, is another point of interest in these phantasmal
appearances. I mean the difficulty which is sometimes felt in recognising
them.

To begin with, it is no doubt possible to suppose that the percipient's
mind builds up the hallucination, so to say, from some unconscious
stratum, so that the conscious self does not at the first moment understand
the figure presented. This would be a form of gradual development of
the quasi-percept which could be paralleled both from ordinary dreams and
from automatic writing. I cannot, indeed, find that purely subjective
hallucinations ever develop themselves in this way. Yet I should myself
see no real difficulty in applying this explanation even to cases where the
recognition wholly fails at the time, and is only effected afterwards by
conscious reflection. Such a case would resemble the anagrams which an
automatic writer will sometimes commit to paper,1 without understanding
at the time what are the words which his unconscious self has thus
concealed in a meaningless group of letters.

But, nevertheless, some of the recorded particulars seem to point to the
simpler explanation — namely, that the phantom's details were developed
independently of the percipient's mind, and that the figure merely failed
in making itself known to him. Sometimes, for example, the percipient
looks attentively at the figure, but mistakes it for some one who
resembles the person whom the figure is afterwards found to represent.2
Sometimes the phantom which the percipient fails to recognise represents
a person whom he might equally have failed to recognise in the flesh.3
Sometimes a call is repeated, as if in insistant appeal.4 And there are
a few cases, — we could not expect many, — where a percipient has seen a
figure wholly unknown to him, but which he has afterwards been able to
identify by circumstantial evidence. Such are cases 544 and 215. Under

1 See Proceedings, S.P.R., Vol. ii., p. 226, &c. 2 See cases 170 and 171.

3 See cases 189 and 241. * See especially case 508.

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 301

this category, too, comes the singular apparition detailed in case 30,
whatever explanation we may prefer to give to it.

Cases like these incline me to think that we are still in danger of an
old error in a modified form, — the error of attributing too much
importance to the person who sees the phantom, because his account of
the matter is the only one which we can get. We are, indeed, no longer
affected by the crude emotional form of this mistake, — as when the
percipient considers the apparition to be a breach of natural laws
permitted expressly in favour of himself. But our own conception of the
apparition as the result of a telepathic transference of impression from
the one to the other mind is apt, I think, to obscure the possibility of
generative causes quite apart from any pre-existing rapport between the
two persons.

§ 24. Thus, to proceed to the next point which I had selected for
notice, it seems to me that the attraction which determines the phantasmal
presence is sometimes local rather than personal. This apparent in-
fluence of a certain locality may be observed in several different stages.
In some cases the phantasmal visitor appears to an acquaintance with
whom he has some slight link, and who is also in a spot to which the
dying man is attached. Here the telepathic impulse may have been
facilitated by the familiar locality. But in a few cases, as already
mentioned, the dying man appears to persons with whom he is in no way
acquainted. And I believe that in every clear instance of this kind there
has been a local attraction, a reason which draws the dying person to that
house or field, irrespective of the living persons who may be there at the
moment.

Case 666 is a good example of what I mean.1 But at the same time it
warns me to press my argument no further. For just as in certain dreams,
already mentioned, we discerned the point of contact between thought-
transference and clairvoyance, so in this appearance, (as it may seem to
have been,) of a dying person to the casual inhabitants of her former home
we have the point of contact between the topic of this work and the
evidence which bears on the haunting of particular spots. To the clair-
voyance, when thus confronted with it, I felt able to express a distinct
adhesion. But as to the haunting I have no equally clear opinion.

Now it is probable that what appears to us as local attraction may
sometimes be a mere phase of psychical rapport. To explain my meaning,

1 See also case 29, where the phantom would appear to have been more probably
interested in a tomb round which the dying person's eccentric thoughts had so often
revolved, than in the ex-gardener who chanced to pass through the familiar church-
yard ; and case 211, where the dying man seems to have been wishing to see Mr. L., in
whose drawin -groom the phantom appeared, not Miss L., who chanced to be present
there. Oase 192 is similar.

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let us assume that all minds whatsoever are telepathically connected, in such
a manner that the existence of any given conception in any mind throws
that mind into connection with every other mind in which that conception
exists at the moment. Let us further suppose that at the hour of death
this faint potential rapport is quickened in the same way as the more
permanent and individual forms of rapport with which we have mainly
had to deal. Then when a man dies et dulcis moriens reminiscitur Argos,
this remembrance of his early home may bring him into telepathic relation
with the stranger now living there, and that stranger may discern the
dying man's phantom merely because the two minds are simultaneously
occupied with an identical conception.

This view, which is practically held by Mr. Gurney, seems to me to
express what is probably some part of the truth. I conceive that, if
telepathy be a fact, something of diffused telepathic percolation is pro-
bably always taking place. This at least is what the analogy of the
limitless and continuous action of physical forces would suggest. If I lift
my little finger I affect, like Zeno's sage, the whole universe by my act.
I apply a vis a tergo to atoms which, for aught I know, may send my push
rolling on to the Pleiades. Or again, the heat, part of which I can by an
effort concentrate on an apple in my hand, is in fact radiating continuously
from all my organism, and fastest in the direction of readiest conduction.
And similarly it is not unreasonable to suppose that the same telergy
which is directed in a moment of crisis towards a man's dearest friend, may
be radiating from him always towards all other minds, and chiefly towards
the minds which have most in common with his own.

Yet it seems to me that this is not enough wholly to explain our cases
of local attraction. Before we can assume that any perceptible telepathic
impact can follow the lines of so transitory and contingent a rapport as
that implied, for instance, by Mr. Bard's presence in Hinxton Churchyard,
in case 29, we ought, I think, to have some case where a phantom
has appeared to B without previous acquaintance, on the ground
of some community of ideas and interest between the two, unconnected
with any special locality. Now, so far as I know, there is not, among our
cases recognised as telepathic, a single incident of this kind.

§ 25. Here, then, we are again met by this perplexing problem of the
relation of psychical operations to space ; and although, as already said,
I shall avoid any attempt at its discussion in this work, the reader will
probably recognise that some such hypothesis as that of an independent
clairvoyant perception of the dying man's, reflected in a correspondingly-
localised hallucination for other minds, is strongly suggested by such
narratives as these.

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 303

There is, however, an obvious difficulty in this view which must be
discussed before we go further. I have spoken repeatedly of acts of
clairvoyant percipience on the dying man's part, corresponding to the
location and movement of the apparition which the distant friend discerns.
But where is the evidence of this clairvoyant percipience ? Ought we not
to have the dying man's testimony that he saw his friend as well as the
friend's testimony that he saw the dying man ? Ought not the mass of
our cases, in this view, to be reciprocal ? and is not that type, in fact, of
very rare occurrence in our collection ?

The difficulty seems formidable ; but there is, I think, a sufficient and
an instructive reply. To put it in a sentence, the recollection of an act
of clairvoyance is itself an occurrence as rare as is the perception of an
apparition ; it involves the same difficult translation of a quasi-percept
from the supernormal to the normal consciousness. The very act of
clairvoyance presupposes a psychical condition as far removed as may be
from the stream of every-day sensation. The clairvoyance alleged to have
been induced by direct experiment, as by mesmeric passes and the like,
seems hardly ever to have been remembered by the subject on waking.
So also the clairvoyance, on a smaller scale and more resembling
hyperaesthesia, which has shown itself in certain cases of spontaneous
somnambulism, seems rarely to persist into the normal memory. And,
speaking generally, all supernormal operation (so far as we can at present
tell) tends to form a secondary memory of its own, alternating with, or
apart from, the memory of common life.

In order, then, that a " reciprocal " case may occur — a case in which
A remembers to have had a clairvoyant perception of B and B's environ-
ment, while B also has perceived A's phantasm at approximately the same
time — two chances have to concur, two difficulties to be surmounted, — the
difficulty on A's part of recollecting his clairvoyant percipience, and the
difficulty on B's part of externalising into memorable distinctness the
corresponding impression conveyed to him. And we may expect that it
will be hard to get a complete or stable account of so hazardous a
transmission as this, — a kind of signalling between boats one of which
expects no signal, and which come in sight of each other only when
they both chance to be riding for a moment on the crest of a wave.

§ 26. Nay, more ; in most cases the signalling boat can only produce a
momentary flash, and sinks to the bottom directly after. In other words,
the agent dies ; and if indeed he has enjoyed a clairvoyant percipience
of B (who saw his phantom), he at any rate cannot return and tell us.
The great bulk of what might have been evidence to the reciprocality of
supernormal percipience is thus destroyed at a blow.

304 NOTE ON A SUGGESTED MODE OF

Not even here, however, need we abandon all hope of getting at some
fragments of evidence. The last words, the last gestures of dying men,
which have been noted so eagerly by many a religious, and many a self-
seeking bystander, may have for us an interest unconnected either with
their form of creed or with their testamentary dispositions. Nothing,
perhaps, has been so little looked for at death-beds as the special indica-
tions which we desire, — indications not of a first perception of another
world, but of a last of this. Yet there are scattered tokens of some such
supernormal percipience on the part of dying men, which carry us from
mere vague expressions to distinct statements as to the distant person who
has been clairvoyantly seen. Thus in case 309 the dying woman's state-
ment is merely to be noted in connection with others of more weight.
Case 296 must either be dismissed as a mere coincidence, of a very
extraordinary kind, or accepted as an almost typical instance of what
might, on my hypothesis, be expected to occur. Case 303 points in the
same direction. Case 683, though well attested, is one whose bizarrerie'm&y
disincline the reader to attach to it the weight which I think that it ought
to carry. On looking closer the reader will see that there are other features
in that account besides mere grotesqueness ; features which are very
unlikely to depend upon any failure, or any embellishment, of memory.
And if, as I am disposed to believe, what is there implied did actually
occur, few words of men momentarily recalled from death have had a
stranger significance.

Then we come to cases where there is a distinct statement of the
dying person's. In this connection, case 354 seems to me important. It
is remote, no doubt ; but Miss W. has herself told me, with an earnestness
that I cannot doubt, that it was, in a sense, the turning incident of her
life, having excited a very marked influence on her character. Then there
is case 612, and the parallel example given in the note on that case.
Now I do not say that it is impossible that any one of these cases may
have been merely subjective on the one part, though veridical on the
other ; so that Miss Ws. dying aunt, for instance, only fancied that she
saw her niece, while the niece did actually behold a phantom of her aunt
at a corresponding time. But I doubt whether many minds will rest at
this point precisely. Those who believe in the reality of the one experi-
ence will probably believe in the reality of the other; remembering that
a dying person's object is not to collect evidence, and that it must be a
mere chance whether he mentions any incident which can vouch to others
for the genuineness of his clairvoyant perception.

I will conclude this section with a narrative whose accuracy there is
no reason to doubt, though, on the other hand, it contains no complete proof
of anything beyond a mere subjective hallucination. It finds therefore, no

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 305

place in our array of evidence ; but it will have an interest to those who
have followed the present argument, as illustrating an occurrence which,
in my view, must probably often take place, though it can seldom leave
any record behind it. For here we have an account of that side only of
the reciprocal incident which is usually lost to human knowledge
altogether ; — I mean of the supernormal percipience of a man in the very
article of death ; while there is no record of any corresponding sound or
vision as experienced by those to whom he seemed to pay his visit of
farewell.

Dr. Ormsby writes as follows from Murphysborough, Illinois.

" April 22nd, 1884.

" I received my degree from Rush Medical College, Chicago, 111.,
at the close of the session 1857-8, and having said so much will pro-
ceed to give you as clear and complete a statement of the occurrence to
which you allude as I can. Early in February, 1862, the 18th Regiment
Illinois Volunteer Infantry, of which I was Assistant-Surgeon, was
ordered from Cairo to join in the attack on Fort Henry. The surgeon
went with the regiment, and left me with the sick in the Regimental
Hospital — about 30 — among whom was Albert Adams, sergeant-major
of the regiment. He was an intelligent and estimable young man, who
had recently been in attendance, and I think graduated at a Literary
College. I had removed young Adams from the hospital proper
to a room in a private house — one that had been quite large —
but a smaller room had been partitioned off at one end with a
board partition, which was, I think, canvassed and papered ; and in
the smaller room so partitioned off was my wife, who is now, besides
myself, the only person who heard the speaking whose whereabouts
I know. Seeing the young man would die, I had telegraphed, and
his father came at 4 or 5 p.m. During all the afternoon he could
only speak in whispers, and at 11 p.m. he to all appearance died.
I was standing beside his father by the bed, and when we thought
him dead the old man put forth his hand and closed the mouth of
the corpse (?), and I, thinking he might faint in the keenness of his
grief, said 'Don't do that! perhaps he will breathe again,' and im-
mediately led him to a chair in the back part of. the room, and returned,
intending to bind up the fallen jaw and close the eyes myself. As I
reached the bedside the supposed dead man looked suddenly up in my face
and said, ' Doctor, what day of the month is it 1 ' I told him the day of
the month, and he answered, ' That is the day I died.' His father had
sprung to the bedside, and turning his eyes on him, he said, ' Father, our
boys have taken Fort Henry, and Charlie ' (his brother) ' isn't hurt. I've
seen mother and the children, and they are well.' He then gave quite

VOL. II. X

306 NOTE ON A SUGGESTED MODE OF

comprehensive directions regarding his funeral, speaking of the corpse as
' my body,' and occupying, I should think, as much as five minutes. He
then turned towards me, and again said, ' Doctor, what day of the month
is it 1 ' and when I answered him as before, he again repeated, ' That's
the day I died,' and instantly was dead. His tones were quite full and
distinct, and so loud as to be readily heard in the adjoining room, and
were so heard by Mrs. Ormsby. Now, this is very remarkable, but
perhaps little more so than the fact (which is true) that I have forgotten
the day of the month on which it occurred.

(Signed) "O. B. ORMSBY, M.D."

In reply to some questions referring to a briefer account first given,
Dr. Ormsby writes on December 28th, %1 883 : —

"The fort was taken and the brother uninjured, as I learned when a
few days afterward I went forward to the regiment. I never learned
whether or not that which was said of the family was correct. The name
of the soldier was Albert Adams, a young man of unexceptionable moral
character and good education. He was then sergeant-major of his
regiment. I understand that his father has been dead several years. I
do not now recollect what other parties were present in the room besides
myself and the young man's father, though there were several, but as we
were almost strangers to each other, and soon separated, I could not expect
to be able to trace them. The young man occupied a room, not in the
hospital proper, which was crowded, but in a private dwelling where he
could have the entire room. The next room, communicating with this by
a door, I occupied as a sleeping room, and my wife, who was then on a
visit, was in that room, with the door closed. I have just asked her
whether she heard the words of the dying soldier, and she answers that
she did, informing me that the partition between the rooms was of boards,
papered, and that young Adams, instead of saying ' Our forces,' &c., said
' Our boys.' I learned nothing of any wraith or appearance to anyone.

(Signed) "O. B. ORMSBY, M.D."

§ 27. But apart from these cases where the evidence is barred by death,
there are many others, as I have already implied, where the agent-
percipient — the man whose clairvoyant perception has given rise to a
corresponding hallucination in other minds — seems to be unable to recount
his side of the experience simply because in his normal state he has for-
gotten it. In our rare narratives of a voluntary self -projection, this
seems to have been the case on each occasion. The friend of the Rev. W.
S. Moses, who appeared to him, (case 13,) had no recollection of the fact,
but an unaccustomed headache may have been a trace of some forgotten
psychical eflbrt. In Mr. S. H. B.'s cases (Nos. 14, 15, and 16,) the

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 307

projection of the phantom was unremembered, and could only be effected
during slumber, or if it was attempted during waking hours, the
concentration of mind which was needed seemed to induce slumber.1

§ 28. Passing from these voluntary cases to the spontaneous cases, I
would ask the reader's attention, for instance, to case 100. From an
evidential point of view, I agree with Mr. Gurney that, while regarding
the case as a well-marked dream of telepathic origin, we cannot press the
details — the memory of the hotel-passages and of Lieutenant O.'s bed-
chamber. What entitles the narrative to a place in this book is the
striking time-coincidence — not the details, which might have been " read
back " into the half-recollected vision. But, on the other hand, if the
incident w^re telepathic at all, there must have been some modus operandi ;
Mr. Allbree's dream must have had some sort of content ; Lieutenant
O.'s psychical appeal must have taken effect in some particular way. And
if any hypothesis at all is to be formed on the matter, are not the recorded
facts best met by the hypothesis that Lieutenant O.'s crisis evoked a
clairvoyant percipience in Mr. Allbree just as the mesmeriser is said to
evoke it in the sleep-waking subject 1 and that Mr. Allbree seemed to him-
self to pass through the surroundings and into the presence of his friend ?
and that on waking the memory of all this was gone from him, though it
was afterwards revived by the bodily sight of the scene which he had
already supernormally discerned 1

Let us see, however, what kind of probability is given to this view by
the records of cases where something of the invaded scene has remained
in the recollection of the invader. I am forced, for clearness' sake, to use
this new metaphorical term, since the words agent and percipient are no
longer sufficiently distinctive, the agent in these cases being, in my view,
the primary percipient also. The metaphor of invasion may be justified
by the fact that in these reciprocal cases A and B always agree as to the
scene where the apparition occurred. It is never (with one or two
dubious exceptions) the case that A thinks that he discerned B in B's
house, while B thinks that he, on his part, was transported to A's house
and 'saw A there. On the contrary, if A fixes the scene as in B's house,
there does B fix it too, a fact which is just what the present hypothesis
would lead us to expect. This apparent localisation in one or the other
entourage is all that my metaphor of invasion is here intended to suggest.

Let us briefly consider the amount of subsequent memory shown in,
a few instances by a waking, a sleeping, and an entranced invader.

§ 29. First, as regards the cases of invasion by a waking agent. These,

1 See case 215 (Vol. i., p. 567). where Mrs. W.'s "trance-state " was semi-voluntary.
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308 NOTE ON A SUGGESTED MODE OF

in my view, are likely to be scanty and incomplete. I conceive that it is
seldom that the sense of transference to a distant locality can be strong
enough in waking life to give rise to the correspondent impression in other
minds. And in this group it seems to me natural to find the confused
or inchoate reciprocity — if such indeed it were — of case 304. But we
have also case 307, where Mr. L. seems to have fallen into a deep reverie
resembling Mr. S. H. B.'s (Nos. 14, 15, and 16), though in Mr. S. H. B.'s
case the reverie passed on into sleep. Case 617, again, perhaps supplies a
kind of faint or transitional instance, which may indicate the way in
which the occupation of two persons with the idea of each other may pass
into something like a reciprocal hallucination.

Here too, if anywhere, must be placed the anomalous case No. 642 —
recalling, on the one hand, the most recent experiments of the communica-
tion of hallucinations to hypnotised subjects ; on the other hand, the old
.accounts of so-called " obsession."

§ 30. More numerous are the cases where a sleeping person's clair-
voyant vision of a distant scene has evoked a corresponding impression of
his own presence in the minds of persons situated in that scene, and has
also persisted into his own waking memory. Two striking cases have
been quoted, Nos. 35 and 306. In these cases not only is the dream (so
to say) acted out, but the clairvoyant retains a memory of actual circum-
stances, of the true positions and actions of the persons clairvoyantly
discerned. In some other cases, — Nos. 94 and 301, — the incidents, as
recollected on both sides, are dreamlike, but the locality of the visionary
incident is agreed on by both persons concerned. We seem, therefore, to
have here another transitional case, a transition between mere simultaneous
dreams and the kind of clairvoyant invasion with which I am now concerned.
Again, case 271, which touches the very nadir of triviality, seems to me
on that account all the more instructive. I cannot think that a mere
dream on Mr. Pike's part that he was calling for hot water, — a condition as
far removed from " death or crisis " as can well be conceived, — would so
strongly have affected the servant in his distant home. I conceive that the
efficacy of the dream depended on his conception of himself as actually
standing at his bedroom door ; so that this, too, was a case of clairvoyant
invasion, though the scene invaded was so commonplace that it left with
the dreamer no memory of anything otherwise unknown. And this
example, in its turn, may throw light on some less-developed clairvoyant
dreams, — as for instance case 412, — where the dreamer's invasion was not
manifested by any phantasmal sight or sound, though the trivial scene was
recollected on awakening

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 309

§31. Still more propitious, in my view, to this mode of psychical
interaction is a state of trance, or even of delirium, on the part of the
percipient-agent, though here the profoundly abnormal state must usually
preclude all recollection. Specially instructive in this connection is
case 308, where the boy whose call was heard in the place where he
feverishly conceived himself to be, — or at least in the field of his
clairvoyant perception, — was afterwards entirely oblivious of that
momentary rapport with his distant sister and friend. It is observable
that the evidential value of this case depends on the accident that a
watcher was present with the boy, and noted the almost automatic
exclamation which his sudden vision evoked. Had there been no one
thus present with him, the call of " Connie ! Margaret ! " would have
ranked as a well-marked collective hallucination of a purely subjective
kind. To this class also belong Mr. Cromwell Varley's singular narratives
(N"os. 84 and 305), which again, bring us round to the cases where the clair-
voyant invasion is apparently facilitated by the hour of dissolution itself.

Lastly, while these pages are passing through the press, we have
received a striking case where memory of what was perceived in the
hypnotic trance persisted into normal consciousness ; — namely, Mr. Cleave's
narrative (case 685, in the Additional Chapter) of his attempts first to
see, and then to be seen by a distant friend. The sequence of incidents
is curiously concordant with the theory which has been expressed above.
First, the steady gaze of the friend who operated threw Mr. Cleave into
unconsciousness. Then a new consciousness showed him the face of the
distant lady, " which gradually became plainer and plainer until I seemed
to be in another room altogether, and could detail minutely all the sur-
roundings."

This process was several times repeated : and he at last succeeded, (as
he, at least, conceives the occurrence,) " in making himself seen by " the
lady in question. Twice she saw him ; and on the second occasion, at least,
he perceived that she saw him, and noted where she was, and in what
company.1 Now there will probably be some readers who, even after all
the evidence which these volumes contain, will set aside Mr. Cleave's
narrative as merely incredible. But among those who are by this time
prepared to accept it as an honest and careful record of fact and impres-
sion, few, I think, will argue that Mr. Cleave's own impressions were
purely subjective, though the lady's were veridical ; — that she genuinely
saw his phantasm in the place from which he imagined himself to be look-,
ing at her, while yet this imagination of his was merely fanciful, and his
supposed perception of her amid her actual surroundings of the moment, a

1 The boy who was with her seems to have seen nothing ; but this fact is quite con-
sistent with my view. (See p. 290.)

310 NOTE ON A SUGGESTED MODE OF

mere chance coincidence. Rather they will hold that he saw her before
she saw him ; that it was because his centre of observation was in some
sense transferred to the Wandsworth dining-room that she saw his phantasm
standing in that dining-room ; — that, in short, as I have already expressed
it, " correspondently with clairvoyant perception there was phantas-
mogenetic efficacy."

§ 32. I do not propose to enter here into a detailed criticism of the
mass of narratives which this book contains. Many of them, I think,
need, for the purpose of any instructive analysis, an experience of
these phenomena far wider than we as yet possess. But I have
said, perhaps, enough to enable the reader to detect for himself,
in many other cases, indications of some such clairvoyant invasion
as I have endeavoured to describe. The cases which I have selected
for notice have some of them been of strange and aberrant types ;
but I wished to show that the scheme of psychical interaction here
suggested does at any rate offer an appropriate niche to nearly every well-
attested phenomenon which our collection includes. It may at least be
useful to have, as it were, a Linncean system under which all our cases
can be conveniently docketed, even though we may as yet be far enough
from discerning their " natural order " or truest affinity.

For clearness' sake, I will briefly trace the steps by which, as I
conceive the matter, our veridical phantasms gradually approach that
reciprocal character which forms their complete or ultimate form.

First come the numerous cases which are too faintly defined for
specification — cases where the impression transferred retains a frankly
psychical character, where neither is a distant scene supernormally
discerned, nor does anyone amid his ordinary surroundings discern a
phantasmal visitant. There is here no illusion of space-relations, —
merely an emotional or ideational affection of the percipient's con-
sciousness. In most of these cases all that we can say is that
some telepathic action has taken place. And the terms agent and
percipient serve to express all that we know of the process ; namely, that
on one side there is either death, or some crisis, or at least some concentra-
tion of thought ; while on the other side something is felt or perceived
which corresponds in some way with the agent's unusual agitation.

But now let us go on to cases which have reached a further stage of
development. After passing through certain intermediate stages, — visions
in the mind's eye, &c.,— we arrive at cases where a spatial element is
apparently introduced; that is to say, the phenomenon, whatever it is,
bears reference to a special scene ; and when this scene is well-defined, and
the two or more persons concerned retain a memory of the incident, it

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 311

is found that they all agree as to what the scene was. It is rarely, how-
ever, that a reciprocity of impression can be satisfactorily attested ; one
or the other side of that phenomenon is usually aborted or absent. And
according as the one or the other side emerges into normal consciousness,
we regard the incident as belonging to one of two main classes ; it may
be a perception of the scene by a distant person, or it may be the perception
of a distant person as forming a part of that scene.

And as the terms agent and percipient now become inadequate,
I am forced to use an avowed metaphor, and to speak of the person who
discerns the distant scene as the clairvoyant invader, whose figure is some-
times discerned in the invaded scene. Now the clairvoyant invader must
be regarded as primarily a percipient ; for his first function, so to say, is to
discern the distant scene. But this discernment of his may fail to subsist
into his waking or normal memory, or instant death may intercept his
recital thereof, so that there may be no evidence to show that he was
clairvoyant at all. And, on the other hand, since his clairvoyant percep-
tion is sometimes accompanied with a corresponding phantasmogenetic
efficacy, — since his supernormal invasion of the scene may generate in the
denizens of that scene a hallucinatory perception of a supernormal in-
vader,— we have cases in which this invader, (though on my theory primarily
a percipient,} appears in our evidence purely as an agent : so that A dies
and A's phantom appears to B, and A is set down simply as an agent,
and B is set down as the only percipient concerned. But in such cases I
hold that A is quite as truly a percipient as B is ; but that the shifting
of the threshold of consciousness which accompanied his perception, —
whether that shift were from waking to sleep -waking or from life to
death, — prevents him, even if his consciousness is shifted back again, from
recalling or recording that perception as a link in his chain of normal
memories.

§ 33. Now let us turn our attention for a moment to the other person
concerned in the phenomenon ; to the denizen, that is to say, of the invaded
scene. He is (it is plain) frequently a percipient ; unless he perceived the
phantasmal invader we should often be ignorant that any invasion had
taken place. But is he ever to be considered as an agent too ? Yes, I
hold that in certain cases he is an agent- in somewhat the same sense as a
mesmerist is an agent when he induces clairvoyance in a subject. In that
case I hold that a certain influence (I know not what) from the mesmerist
evokes or disengages in the subject a pre-existent but non-manifest capacity
of supernormal percipience, which first places that subject in rapport with
the ideas or sensations of the mesmerist himself (as in experiments of our
own, and other cases, to be found especially in Supplement, Chap. I.), but

312 NOTE ON A SUGGESTED MODE OF

which ultimately, in some few well-attested cases, does actually extend
the subject's percipience beyond the range either of his own or of his
mesmeriser's normal powers of sense. And somewhat similarly, 1 hold
that if a man is dying or deeply agitated, and his friend, gifted with much
latent capacity of supernormal percipience, is asleep at a distance, then
some influence from the dying man may evoke or direct that percipience
in the friend, so that he becomes cognisant first, perhaps, of the deathbed
scene as realised by the dying man himself, but ultimately of that scene
as it might be realised by an independent entrant, including casual denizens
unnoticed by the dying man, but who may perhaps, on their part, discern
the friend's phantasmal invasion, and thus be percipients without being
agents (as in case 30) ; while perhaps the dying man, who is in reality the
determining cause of that phantasmal invasion, may attain to no per-
ception of it whatever.

§ 34. " But," someone will say, " are you not here introducing a cross-
division ? You have spoken hitherto of A as enabled by his own death
to make a clairvoyant invasion of the scene where B sits in a normal
condition. You now speak of A as enabled by B's death to make a
similar invasion of the scene where B. lies dying. You are thus
classing the dying man alternately as the invader and as the invaded ;
and yet surely he who is undergoing this profoundest of all crises ought
always to be ranged on the same side in whatsoever psychical interaction
you are assuming ; there cannot be other psychical conditions more marked
and determinant than his." I have led up to a statement of this difficulty
because I believe that the answer, if we ever attain to more than
a glimpse of it, will involve that true principle of classification which we
are still seeking. And as a hint towards such reply I will repeat what
has been already suggested, namely, that the right way of regarding these
startling incidents is not as isolated psychical operations, but rather as
emergent manifestations of psychical operations which are continuous,
though latent ; and which belong, not so much to the self of which we
are habitually conscious, as to a hidden chain of mentation, which,
for aught we know, may comprise a continuity of supernormal per-
cipience or activity. When therefore, B is dying and A has a clairvoyant
dream, as of presence at the deathbed, the relation between B and A with
which we have to deal is not the mere external relation between agony on
the one side and repose on the other. It is a relation between that
specific supernormal activity which accompanies death and that specific
supernormal activity which accompanies slumber. And though the death
is still the prime factor in the resultant interactions, we cannot say
a priori what the scene of interaction in any given case will be ; — whether

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 313

there will be an invasion by the dying man of the sleeper's chamber, or by
the sleeper of the dying man's.

I will illustrate my meaning by a modification of an analogy which I
have elsewhere employed. I compare our conscious existence to a barge
floating down the Arve, where it flows side by side, but as yet unmingled
with the Rhone ; the water round our keel is habitually turbid and
opaque, but occasionally an inequality of river-bed, a clash of currents,
swings us for a moment into the more pellucid Rhone. The Rhone — our
unconscious self — flows on as continuously as the Arve, but the barge enters
it only by moments, and those moments may be determined by changes in
the Rhone's bed as well as in the Arve's. For the most part, the reef
which raises breakers in the one stream will raise them in the other also ;
and imminent death, for instance, may jerk us into clairvoyance by a
shock communicated at once to our conscious and to our unconscious
being. But there may also be crises which involve not so much a con-
fusion of the normal life as an expansion or liberation of the supernormal;
and when we become clairvoyant in deep sleep or the mesmeric trance
this is because the turbid waters are running in a narrower channel, and
the barge sways into the broadening current of the pellucid stream.
Again, there may be crises which are merely dissociative or disintegrant ;
where the barge poises on the very boundary line between the two currents,
and both streams of personality are manifested at once. It is thus that
I explain Mrs. Newnham's case (Vol. I., pp. 63-9), where the intelligence
which wrote the replies to unseen questions would seem to have consisted
of an unconscious current of Mrs. Newnham's own existence, exercising
supernormal percipience, but dreamlike and incomplete in co-ordinating
power. And with Mrs. Newnham's case I should compare certain cases
which bear, indeed, no plain resemblance thereto, and which Mr. Gurney
has treated as almost obviously morbid and delusive, — cases where the
" double " of a living person has been seen together with that person him-
self. Take the most bizarre of these cases, that of Mrs. Hall, (No. 333,)
where, as a lady sits at table with three friends, her phantom semblance is
seen, by herself and by all present, standing at the end of the sideboard.
Now the analogy between Mrs. Newnham and Mrs. Hall seems to me to be
this ; that in the compound personality of each of them the " critical
point " of dissociation was reached (so to say) at a very low temperature.1
In Mrs. Newnham's case, her unconscious self exercised supernormal per-
cipience, and manifested itself by controlling her motor system, while her-
conscious self maintained its ordinary way. In Mrs. Hall's case, her un-
conscious self, assuming a too facile independence, and possibly exercising a

1 I should explain in the same way cases 327, 328, 329, 348. Note that the girl seen
in case 329 had previously been phantasmally seen, (like Mrs. Stone,) in the same
apparently casual way.

314 NOTE ON A SUGGESTED MODE OF

supernormal percipience, manifested itself by its phantasmogenetic efficacy
while her conscious self was unaware of any inward excitement or "shearing
stress." I venture, however, to surmise that had Mrs. Hall been thrown
into a mesmeric trance directly after her " double " had shown itself, she
might have remembered contemplating the room as though from the
position which the " double " appeared to occupy.

§ 35. There is thus a point of view from which these " apparitions of the
double" represent the most developed type to which our veridical
phantasms can attain. But in the process of development their veridicality,
so to say, has become a quite subsidiary thing. Mrs. Stone's double l was,
I believe, veridical, in the sense that it announced the fact of an exception-
ally easy dissociation between the currents of her being. But this was not
a fact of evidential value — it was not supported, as our cases in general
are, by any coincidence with an external and objective incident.

Our preferable type, therefore, of a fully-developed veridical hallucina-
tion,— the "perfect flower" to which we may, for clearness' sake, suppose that
so many rudimentary or partially-aborted psychical efflorescences are tend-
ing to conform themselves, — will be a complete case of reciprocal percipience,
where the dying A clairvoyantly perceives B in B's entourage, and narrates
that experience, while at the same time B "discerns A's phantasmal figure
in a place corresponding to that from which A conceives himself to be
exercising his supernormal vision. In such a type as this, I conceive,
the phenomena which we investigate separately under the titles of thought-
transference, clairvoyance, apparitions, mix and meet ; and though their
very juxtaposition suggests fresh difficulties, these, as I claim, are not im-
ported by any theorising of mine, but are inherent in all attempts to corre-
late things psychical with physical things. As regards the relation of this
clairvoyant perception, this phantasmogenetic energy, to space and matter,
the theory here advanced leaves us entirely uncommitted. This book, indeed,
contains no evidence of any real or registrable action of psychical energy
on molecular matter ; and much evidence that an apparent action on
matter may turn out to be of a quite hallucinatory kind. And as regards
space we are left equally at liberty to suppose that the psychical energy
here attributed to our own being, or to a part of our own being, operates
in ordinary three-dimensional space, or in four-dimensional space (if that
exists), or that it does not really operate in space at all, though its
effects be necessarily apprehended as in space by the normal consciousness.

§ 36. Such emphatic expressions of ignorance as these must go hand in

1 See p. 85. Observe that in one of Mrs. Stone's cases her consciousness seemed
for the moment to become external to her ordinary self,— the barge, floating on the
dividing line between the two currents, swayed momentarily into the Rhone.

PSYCHICAL INTERACTION. 315

hand with any attempt at positive theorising. Our endeavour must be to
give to our strange and scattered phenomena enough of coherence and
co-ordination to enable the reader's mind to grasp them and work
upon them, while we expressly avoid any such self -committal to any one
hypothesis as may constrain rather than guide inquiry. In so new a
subject, if the need of this resolute open-mindediiess be recognised from
the first, there should be little difficulty in maintaining it. The mere
popular prepossessions which encumber the outset of our inquiry nny
readily be swept aside ; and we must then watch that no dogmatic
statement, unprovable by the evidence, be raised into authority in their
room. Thus the writers who speak of a " force neurique rayonnante," of
" brain-waves," of " ondulationnisme," of a " mentiferous ether," as if these
were more than purely metaphorical expressions, seem to me to be falling
into the same error which has encumbered hypnotic experiment with the
question-begging terms of " animal magnetism " and " electro-biology."
Let us use every analogy which helps us, but let us recognise that nothing
has been discovered which shows that thought-transference has anything
to do with ether or with vibrations. Everything in the universe may be
reducible to vibrations, for aught we know ; but until some definite
experiment, as of reflection, interference, or the like, can be brought
forward to connect telepathy with ether-waves, it is surely safer to avoid
using that analogy in a way which suggests that it has a prior right over
many others which might be proposed.

For our own part, though obliged by the very structure of language to
make frequent use of terms which are primarily of physical import, we
have kept as much as possible to the simplest, and have spoken of the
telepathic impulse or impact for sheer lack of expressions more abstract
still. We have varied the metaphor by suggesting that the brief energy
of the psychical element in man which seems to accompany physical dis-
solution recalled the momentary energy of combination possessed, say, by
"nascent hydrogen," hydrogen just released from union with some other
element. Electrical action, too — itself so unexplained — has furnished us
with several parallels, arid Mr. Gurney (p. 270) has especially pointed to
its latent pervasiveness, its seemingly accidental manifestations.

And yet again, the views suggested in this paper lead us on to a
novel range of analogy. The conception of a percipient reciprocity, the
hints which have seemed to come to us of the perpetual but uiimanifested
operation of an unconscious element in our own being ; — these notions lifx
us above the conception of mere mechanical interforces, and suggest
a more vital communication. In the relation of the cell to the complex
organism, — in the relation of the diffused and multiplex " colonial con-
sciousness " of. the sponge or the hydrozoon to the concentrated conscious-

316 NOTE ON A SUGGESTED MODE, ETC.

ness of man ; — here, it may be, are analogies which have a psychical
counterpart behind the scenes of sense. When from these dim and
incoordinated beginnings the individuation of the human animal has
risen complete ; when the hierarchy of his nervous centres has led up to
highest centres which represent and govern his entire organism at
once ; — then we are accustomed to start, as it were, afresh, and
to conceive his hardly-won unity as an elemental unit in a larger
integration. We speak of him as a gs>ov 7roXmKoi>, as a " member
of the body politic," as a component item in that Leviathan whose
monstrous semblance, in Hobbes' frontispiece, is packed together from
a myriad visages of men. But the growth of the social organism is
rather a psychical than a physical thing. It may take outward form in
railway or telegraph, but its vitality lies in the inter-connection of cognate
minds, in the differentiations and integrations of the thought and emotion
of speaking men. A common interest, a common passion, is the vein or
nerve which interlinks and modifies the monotonous isolation of individual
lives. Is it not, then, conceivable that in these direct telepathic trans-
ferences between mind and mind — these associations which seem to effect
themselves beyond our threshold of consciousness, and only to startle us by
their occasional intrusion into the field of sense — we may be gaining a first
glimpse of a process of psychical evolution, as true and actual as any in
the physical world? of some incipient organic solidarity between the
psychical units which we call man and man ? Perhaps beneath the body
politic a soul politic is integrating itself unseen ; —

totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.

Let this analogy take its place with the rest. It is too soon, indeed, to
detect the law of these operations, but not too soon to affirm confi-
dently that these operations obey their certain law ; it is too soon to
discern in this inextricabilis error the path by which Evolution seeks its
goal, but not too soon to be assured that it is the principle of Evolution
itself which, like Daedalus, cceca regens filo vestigia, will in its own time
unlock the labyrinth which its own magic force has made ; will conduct
us from physical to psychical, perhaps from terrene to transcendent things.

F. W. H. M.

SUPPLEMENT.

*%* The Supplement does not include the Additional Chapter
at the end of the volume, which is to be regarded as belonging
to the main body of the work.

SUPPLEMENT.

INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. THE supplementary evidence now to be presented, like the
larger body of the work, consists of two parts, pertaining respectively
to experimental and to spontaneous telepathy.

The experimental cases, which will be given in the first chapter,
are all connected with a more or less abnormal state of the per-
cipient ; and they belong for the most part to the transitional class,1
where the mind of the agent is fixed on the sensation or idea which
he desires to transfer, but the percipient is not aware that any
experiment is being tried. Some of the cases are even spontaneous,
in so far as the agent himself was not at the moment concentrating
his attention on the effect to be produced ; but they are experimental
in the sense that they have belonged to a course of hypnotic treat-
ment, deliberately pursued during a considerable period.

The subsequent chapters will be devoted to spontaneous phe-
nomena, belonging to the various groups which have been already
passed in review. And in relation to this branch of the subject, I
must ask the reader throughout to bear in mind what the Supplement
professes, or rather what it does not profess, to be.

§ 2. It does not constitute a case on which we should have felt
that the reality of telepathy could be safely based.

It includes, in the first place, a large number of first-hand
narratives where, for various reasons, the chance of error in some vital
poin't seems less improbable than in those hitherto quoted. A
detailed preliminary survey of these various reasons is scarcely
necessary ; the reader of the 4th chapter of the preceding volume will
readily picture them, and they will be abundantly noted in connection
with the testimony to which they apply. The chief points are.

1 To such cases I have attached numbers, they being parallel to the cases in
Vol. i., Chap, iii., where the numbering of examples began. The cases where the perci-
pient was (certainly or possibly) aware of being the subject of an experiment, are given
without numbers — not as an indication of evidential inferiority, but because of practical
difficulties, a whole series of experiments having often been made on a single occasion.

VOL. II.

322 SUPPLEMENT.

naturally those which introduce a doubt as to the closeness of the
alleged coincidence, or as to the unique or highly exceptional
character of the percipient's impression.

In the second place, a large number of the included narratives are
second-hand. They are of a good type, no doubt ; being received not
from persons who have only casually heard the first-hand account
without any opportunities of judging of its correctness, but from
persons for the most part intimately connected with the original
witness, and well assured at any rate of his conviction as to the truth
of what he told, and of the impression which the experience had made
on him.1 Of the majority of these narratives, we think that the fair
conclusion would be that, though possibly or probably inaccurate in
minor points, they faithfully present the essential point which bears
on the telepathic theory. But I cannot make the justice of this view
evident ; no such defence of it can be given as was attempted in
Chapter IV. of the first volume, in respect of the first-hand testimony.
It is an instinct, rather than a logically-grounded opinion — and is, in
fact, the slowly-formed result of a very large amount of labour in the
sifting and comparing of records, and in the examination of witnesses.
But though the view cannot be proved correct, I may remind the
reader that we who hold it have had exceptional opportunities of
appreciating to the full the dangers which truth runs in passing from
mouth to mouth ; that we believe we do appreciate those dangers to
the full ; and that signs of this have not been lacking in the course of
the work. And it may, I think, be taken as a further sign of such
appreciation that we feel ourselves unable to regard the immense
number of bond fide records that remain to be presented, as amount-
ing to any sort of independent proof of our case.

§ 3. But in saying that our case could not be properly regarded
as proved by the Supplement alone, I am far from saying that it is
not supported. If the existence of spontaneous telepathy were a
certainty, many of the experiences which follow might almost certainly
be referred to it ; and in proportion as the existence of spontaneous
telepathy is probable, may they with probability be referred to it.
The bond fide evidence for them exists, and has to be accounted for ;
and to us it seems just of the sort that we should expect to find, and
exhibits just the sort of shortcomings that we should expect to find, on
the hypothesis that telepathy is really a fact in Nature. This state-

1 As an illustration of the difference, see Colonel V.'s case below, Chap, v., § 3, and
the note thereon.

INTRODUCTION. 323

meat will of course not have any weight with those who differ from
us, on a priori grounds, from the very outset. Such persons may,
and indeed almost must, affirm that the far stronger body of evidence
which has been already passed in review is just what they would
expect to find, on the hypothesis that telepathy is not a fact in
Nature. Their position here would perhaps be stronger if they had
actually made this affirmation before the body of evidence was there.
It at any rate does not seem certain that those who have dogmatically
asserted that there are no sober first-hand accounts of, e.g., apparitions
at death from educated and unhysterical witnesses — or that there are
not more than the very few which the doctrine of chances will at once
account for — would have been ready, when our inquiry was taken
up, to contradict themselves by predicting that many scores of such
accounts could be had for the asking. But however that may be,
my remarks are addressed only to those who would admit that the
evidence already presented constitutes at least a solid argument for
the reality of spontaneous telepathy. And these persons will probably
agree, if a considerable number of cases are so attested that the
rejection of the telepathic explanation of them would involve great
improbabilities, that then (1) it is natural that a considerable number
of cases should also be so attested that the rejection of the telepathic
explanation of them would involve less, but still considerable,
improbabilities; (2) the more completely evidenced cases establish
a presumption that some, at any rate, of the less completely evi-
denced cases are genuine ; and (3) the general objection to the
reality of the class of phenomena, as out of relation to the general
experience of mankind, is legitimately diminished by taking into
account all the cases which, if the cause that we suggest be a reality,
would more reasonably be referred to it than to any other cause.
These last words of course involve the whole judgment of what
follows ; and I hope that, on the whole, they will seem defensible.
In this, that, or the other case, a mistake may be easily imaginable.
But here, as before, it may be represented that the argument is
cumulative ; that the body of narratives, as it stands, is harmonious
and sober in character ; that they introduce none of the obvious
marvels which popular superstition is so ready to supply (Vol. I.,.
p. 165) ; that they never pass the line up to which the more com-
pletely evidenced cases have carried us ; — and that such are not the
natural results of unconscious invention or exaggeration, playing at
random over hundreds of disconnected instances.

VOL. n. Y 2

[CHAP.

CHAPTER I.

FURTHER EXAMPLES OF THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE, PRINCIPALLY
IN HYPNOTIC CASES.

§ 1. THIS chapter will contain some specimens of the older observa-
tions in " thought-transference " referred to in Vol. I., p. 12 ; and
also a few more recent instances.

I will take first the most rudimentary transferences — those of
tastes and pains.

Mr. Esdaile, for many years Presidency Surgeon in Calcutta,
whose observations on hypnotic phenomena now form an accepted
part of physiological science, gives the 'following case of transference
of taste between himself and a patient whom he had mesmerised
(Practical Mesmerism, p. 125). The subject was a young Hindoo,
Baboo Mohun Mittre, who had been operated upon painlessly whilst
in the mesmeric trance.

" One day that the Baboo came to the hospital to pay his respects,
after getting well, I took him into a side room, and mesmerising him till
he could not open his eyes, I went out and desired my assistant surgeon
to procure me some salt, a slice of lime, a piece of gentian, and some
brandy, and to give them to me in any order he pleased, when I opened
my mouth. We returned, and blindfolding Lallee Mohun, I took hold of
both his hands : and, opening my mouth, had a slice of half-rotten lime
put into it by my assistant. Having chewed it, I asked, ' Do you taste
anything ? ' ' Yes, I taste a nasty old lime ' : and he made wry faces in
correspondence. He was equally correct with all the other substances,
calling the gentian by its native name, cheretta ; and when I tasted the
brandy, he said it was Shrdb (the general name for wine and spirits).
Being asked what kind, he said, ' What I used to drink — brandy.' For I
am happy to say he is cured of his drunken habits (formerly drinking
two bottles of brandy a day) as well as of his disease."

The Rev. C. H. Townshend, in his Facts in Mesmerism, gives
several examples. (See especially pp. 68, 72, 76, 122, 150, 151, 184)
The following experiments were made on a servant of his own, in

i,] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 325

whom he had produced the trance-condition ; but it cannot be held
impossible, from his description, that the results should have been due
to an acute sense of smell, combined with a certain amount of luck.

" Wine, water, and coffee were handed to me successively, in such a way
as to prevent the patient from perceiving, by any usual means, what the
liquors were. He, however, correctly named them in order. The order
was then changed, and the results of the experiments were the same.
Flowers were given me to smell. I was holding the patient by one hand at
the time, but turning altogether away from him to a table, over which I
bent, so as to interpose myself between him and anything that might be
handed to me. He, however, when I smelt of the flowers, imitated the
action, and on my asking him what he perceived, replied without hesita-
tion, ' Flowers.' Upon this, one of the party silently changed the flowers
for a bottle of eau de Cologne, when he observed, ' That is not the same
smell ; it is eau de Cologne.' With the manner of conducting this
experiment and its results, all who were present declared themselves
perfectly satisfied."

" Three of my sleep-wakers," Mr. Townshend says in another
place, " could in no way distinguish substances when placed in their
own mouths, nor discriminate between a piece of apple and a piece
of cheese ; but the moment that I was eating, they, seeming to eat
also, could tell me what I had in my mouth."

The next case is also one of Mr. Townshend's.

(358) " Did any one strike or hurt me in any part of the body when
Anna M. was in sleep-waking, she immediately carried her hand to a
corresponding part of her own person. Then she would rub her own
shoulder when mine was smarting with a blow, manifesting that the
actual nerves of that part were, pro tempore, restored to their functions.
Once an incredulous person came near me unawares, and trod upon my
foot, which was quite hidden under a chair. The sleep-waker instantly
darted down her hand and rubbed her own foot with an expression of
pain. Again, if my hair was pulled from behind, Anna directly raised
her hand to the back of her head. A pin thrust into my hand elicited
an equal demonstration of sympathy."

Stimulated by Mr. Townshend's experiments, the Rev. A. Gilmour,
of Greenock, made some experiments on one of his servants. He
described the results in a letter to Professor Gregory (quoted in
Animal Magnetism,, p. 211), in which the following passage occurs : —

" I could throw her into the mesmeric sleep in 40 seconds. She is able
to tell what I taste, such as soda, salt, sugar, milk, water, <fec., though not-
in the same room with me. When my foot is pricked, or my hair Bulled,
or any part of my person pinched, she feels it, and describes it unerringly."

Professor Gregory himself says (Animal Magnetism, p. 23) : —

" I have seen and tested the fact of community of sensation in so
many cases that I regard it as firmly established. No one who has had

326 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

opportunities of observing this beautiful phenomenon can long hesitate as
to its entire truth — such is the expression of genuine sensation in the face
and gesture, besides the distinct statements made by the sleeper."

I need hardly say that a single carefully recorded experiment would
be worth more than any number of such general assertions as this.

The following account is given by Dr. Elliotson in the Zoist,
Vol. V., pp. 242-5.

(359) " I requested my butler to enclose, in five different packets of
blotting-paper, salt, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and pepper. These were
wrapped in one common cover when given to me, and I handed them
over to Mr. Scarlett, the eldest son of Lord Abinger, who gave me one
packet after another, any that he chose, as each was done with by me.
The Archbishop of Dublin and several clergymen and other friends were
present.

" When I put each into my mouth, I was ignorant of its contents, and
learnt its nature as the paper became moistened and gave way. The first
was salt, and I stood with it in my mouth at Mrs. Snewing's side, and
rather behind her, saying nothing. Before a minute had elapsed she
moved her lips, made a face, and said, ' Oh, that's nasty enough.' ' What
do you mean ? ' ' Why you've put salt into my mouth, you needn't have
done that.' I removed the packet of salt, and took another, which
proved to be cinnamon. Presently she said, ' Well that is odd ; I never
heard of such a thing ; to put such things together into one's mouth ! '
' Why what do you mean ? ' ' Why now you've given me something nice
and warm, very pleasant, but you've mixed salt with it.' The impression
of the salt thus still remained. ' What is it ? ' 'I don't know the name of
it, but it's very nice ; it's what we put into puddings ; brown, and in sticks.'
She puzzled a long while and then on my asking if it was cinnamon, ' Yes,
that's it,' she replied, ' How odd that I shouldn't recollect the name.' I
then removed it, and took into my mouth another packet, which proved
to be sugar, and I observed that Mr. Scarlett very properly peeped into it,
before he gave it to me. After a minute or two she began, ' Oh, that's
very sweet; I like that ; it's sugar.' I removed it from my mouth and
took another packet, which proved to be ginger. After a minute or two
she exclaimed, ' Well, this is the funniest thing I ever heard of, to mix
salt, and cinnamon, and sugar, and now to give me something else hot.'
' What is it ? ' 'I don't know ; but this is very hot too. It sets all my
mouth on fire.' In fact I felt my mouth burning hot. After some
difficulty, for she was puzzled between these conflicting impressions, she
said it must be ginger, and went on complaining of the heat of the mouth,
I took a glass of cold water, and she instantly said, smiling, ' That isn't
hot, that's nice and cool, it makes my mouth quite comfortable.' ' What
is it ? ' ' Why it's water ; what else can it be 1 ' The last packet was
now put into my mouth, and proved to be pepper. She cried out, ' Why
you're putting hot things again into my mouth. It gets down my throat,
and up my nose ; it's burning me,' and she soon declared it was pepper.
I could scarcely endure it, and took a draught of water. She was instantly
relieved, and said, ' How cool and nice that is.' She could not have seen
what I was doing had her eyes been open.

i.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 327

" A gentleman now came beside me and pricked one of my fingers with
a pin. She took no notice of it at first, but, after a few minutes, slowly
began to rub the fingers of her corresponding hand, and at last rubbed
one only, that corresponding with my finger which had been pricked, and
complained that someone had pricked it. The back of one of my hands
was now pricked. She made no remark but remained in quiet sleep.
The pricking was at length repeated at the same spot, and pretty sharply,
in silence. Still she made no remark. We gave it up, and my other
hand was pricked in silence. After a little time she began to rub her
hand, corresponding with that of mine which was the first pricked, and
complained of its having been pricked at the very same spot as mine.
Gradually she ceased to complain, and was still again. After the lapse
of another minute or two, all the party observing silence, she complained
that the other hand, corresponding with that of mine last pricked, was
pricked, and wondered that any person should do so. This is a most
remarkable circumstance ; perfectly corresponding to the phenomena of
sympathetic movement in the Okeys, which often came out so long
after the movement of the operator had been made. Indeed, after he,
in despair of any effect, had made another motion for them to imitate,
and when he was expecting the latter, the first would take place.1 It
shows how easily persons ignorant of the subject and unqualified to make
experiments may come to false conclusions, and set themselves up as the
discoverers of failures and imposition. In my patients the movement
given for sympathy and not productive of apparent effect has often come
out again in a subsequent sleep-waking, the impression remaining uncon-
sciously in the brain. The heat and taste of the pepper still remained in
Mrs. Snewing's mouth, and she went on good-naturedly, as always, com-
plaining of it. While she was complaining, I suddenly awoke her, and
asked what she tasted and whether her mouth was hot. She looked sur-
prised, and said she ' tasted nothing ' and her ' mouth was not hot ' ; and
she smiled at the question.

" A few weeks afterwards, I repeated these experiments with all the
same precautions, in the presence of Mr. H. S. Thompson and Mr.
Chandler, who are very accurate observers, Mrs. Thompson and a few other
friends. I stood quite behind her large high-backed leather chair. Mr.
Chandler gave me the packets at his own pleasure, and, on tasting each, I
wrote on a slip of paper what I tasted, and held up the slip at a distance
behind her, that all might judge of her accuracy and my truth. These were
the same articles as in the former experiments ; but, as they were on both
occasions taken at random, the order, of course, turned out to be different.
In addition, Mr. Chandler gave me a piece of dried orange-peel from his
pocket ; and I tasted water and wine. She named each article with per-
fect accuracy, and readily ; remarking that it was very strange she once
could not recollect the name of cinnamon. Indeed, on the first occasion,
she described the taste and the external character and uses of the various
articles with perfect accuracy, but hesitated in giving the names of the*
cinnamon and ginger and pepper ; a fact showing that the sleepi-
ness extended a little more over the mental powers than one might

1 Compare Vol. i., p. 56. I may once more remind the reader of the interest of such
facts, in connection with the "deferred impressions" of spontaneous telepathy.

328 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

imagine. In a note sent me lately by Mr. Thompson are the following
remarks : —

" ' The patient's lips moved, and in a very short time after you had
detected its nature, she appeared to taste it as well as yourself ; and when
it was anything disagreeable, begged you would not put the nasty stuff into
her mouth in this way. She told, without the slightest mistake, every-
thing you tasted : salt, sugar, cinnamon, pepper, ginger, orange-peel, wine,
and some others. Not a word was spoken by any of the party to each
other, and the only question that was asked the patient was, what she had
in her mouth that she complained of. After the spices, when you drank
water, she seemed to enjoy it much, saying it cooled her mouth ; but at
other times as you drank it very freely, she requested that you would not
give her any more water for that so much water was disagreeable to her.
There were present, Mr. Chandler, Lord Adare, Baron Osten, a friend of
his, whose name I do not know, myself, and my wife. We were all
perfectly satisfied with the entire success of the experiments.'

" I then smelt eau de Cologne, without any noise. She presently said,
' How nice ; what a nice thing you've given me to smell.' But she could
not tell what it was ; when I mentioned its name, she recognised it. I did
the same with water. She made no remark. I asked her if she smelt
anything. She replied, ' No, I don't smell anything; what should I smell?'

" I put snuff to my nostrils ; she almost immediately complained of
snuff being given to her."^^

The next account was sent to us by the late Professor J. Smith,
of the University of Sydney.

" September 3rd, 1884.

(360) " The experiments [in the Proceedings of the S. P. R.] on transfer-
ence of tastes brought to my mind a very interesting case which occurred
to me more than 40 years ago, when I was a medical student. I have never
seen a similar case in print, and therefore I am tempted to relate it,
although possibly it may be quite familiar to you. When my attention
was first drawn to mesmerism, I got hold of an errand boy, 12 or 13 years
old, who turned out a most sensitive ' subject.' Among many other things
that I tried upon him, while in the mesmeric sleep, was the transference
of taste. The boy could describe the taste of anything I put into my
mouth, although no sound was uttered to guide him, and I myself did
not know what the substances were until I put them into my mouth. I
stood behind the boy's chair, holding one of his hands in mine, and put
my other hand behind me for the different articles, which were supplied to
me successively by a druggist, in the back room of whose shop we happened
to be.

" One of the things he gave me was a glass of whisky, and a mouthful
of this strong spirit taken unexpectedly gave me a choking sensation.
The boy writhed on his chair, and gasped for breath. Becoming alarmed
I asked my friend to run for a glass of water, intending to give it to the
boy. On receiving it, it occurred to me that the best way of relieving the
boy would be to drink the water myself. I did so, at the same time
watching his throat. Being a medical student, I knew something of the
mechanism of deglutition, and was aware that the act of swallowing,
shown externally by the rise and fall of the ' pomum Adami,' cannot be

i.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 329

performed without something to swallow, and that a person cannot repeat
the act voluntarily more than once, or at the most twice consecutively,
unless something is put into the mouth. I therefore watched the boy's
throat while I drank the water. His ' pomum Adami ' moved up and
down regularly with mine, and he was immediately relieved.1

«J. SMITH."

The next extract is from Animal Magnetism, (1866,) by Edwin
Lee, M.D., p. 127.

(361) " On one occasion I tested the community of feeling upon the
celebrated somnambulist Alexis, who had not been previously subjected to
a trial of this kind. His magnetiser, M. Marcillet, being behind, and
quite out of sight of Alexis, whose eyes, moreover, were bandaged, I
suddenly pricked his left elbow, upon which Alexis put his hand to his
left elbow complaining of pain there. I then pinched the magnetiser's
right little finger, and Alexis felt his right little finger pinched. There
could be no collusion or mistake here, as neither of them knew of my
intention, which indeed was unpremeditated on my part, the thought
arising in my mind at the time."

The following case is of a different character, but may be inserted
in connection with the last, as it concerns the same percipient, and
was also observed by Dr. E. Lee. It serves to show how much which
has been represented as independent clairvoyance may really be
explained by thought-transference.

Miss Curtis writes from 15, Parade Villas, Herne Bay, Kent: —

"November 12th, 1885.

" About the year 1847 or 1848, the Dr. Lee who wrote a book on the
German Baths, made an arrangement with Alexis Didier, a clairvoyant
at Paris, and M. Marcillet, his mesmeriser, to come to Brighton. There
was to be no public exhibition, but only seances at private houses, and
about 12 persons to be present, and each to have an opportunity of trying
Alexis in the manner he or she wished.

" I was at Brighton at the time, and before going to see Alexis, wrote
his name on a piece of paper, and doubled it three or four times, and then
put it in a box that had held steel pens, and tied it up. When my turn
came, 1 gave the box to Alexis, and he began reading the letters on the
outside. I told him there was a paper inside I wanted him to read, and
Dr.- Lee asked me to give my hand to Alexis, and think of the words.
Alexis then said, ' The first letter is A. the second, L.' I answered ' Yes' ;
and he turned the box, and wrote Alexis Didier on the back. Before I
saw him the second time, I took a small smelling bottle out of its leather
case, put two seals inside — one seal was in the form of a basket. I gave
the case to Alexis, and asked him how many things were inside, and he
said two, and they were seals ; he took a pencil and paper and drew them;
they were then taken out, and the drawings exactly resembled them.
Some one asked if Alexis could read what was on one of the seals ; he
said he could not, because it was written backwards. Dr. Lee asked me

1 An apparent instance of telepathic imitation of a less abnormal sort is recorded in
Townshend's Mesmerism Proved True, p. 65.

330 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

to give my hand ; I thought of the word, and Alexis directly said,
' Croyez,' which was correct. [This, however, is no test ; as we find on
inquiry, that Alexis had taken the seals into his hand, and had had an
opportunity of reading the word.] I then asked him two or three
questions about the persons who had given me the seals, and he made a
mistake, and said the lady who had given me one was in England, whereas
she was in Africa. Alexis was unequal, some days telling almost every-
thing, and other days failing in several things. The notes Dr. Lee made
were printed, and I had a copy, but gave it away. " SEUNA CURTIS."

[The first of these results is rendered inconclusive by the fact of the
contact. Still it is unlikely that Miss Curtis unconsciously drew on
Alexis' hand forms sufficiently distinctive to be recognised as A L. The
rest of the name may, of course, have been a guess on his part — though
(as Miss Curtis reminds me) he was not often called by the double name
which she wrote. Dr. Lee mentions this first experiment, without details,
in his book, but not the second.]

Corresponding to the cases where the hypnotic " subject " has
shown sensibility to the hypnotiser's pain, instances are recorded
where the hypnotiser has become sensitive to the " subject's " pain.
In Lausanne's book, Des Principes et des Precedes du Magnetisms
Anivnal (Paris, 1819), the following paragraphs occur : —

" Les personnes sensibles et bien en rapport ressentent-elles, comme je
1'ai dit, une grande partie des efiets que produit le travail de la nature
renforcee de son action. C'est ainsi que je ressens interieurement des
pesanteurs de tete, des tiraillemens, des douleurs a 1'estomac, au foie, & la
rate, aux reins, a la tete, et dans toutes les parties de mon corps
correspondantes aux parties qui travaillent dans le corps de la personne
que je magnetise. Mes sensations ne sont jamais aussi vives que celles du
malade, mais quelquefois elles le sont assez pour m'etre incommodes. II
y a des jours ou ma sensibilite est telle, que des mouvemens fugitifs et
legers dans la personne malade me deviennent distincts. 11 se presente
dans ces sensations quelques phenomenes sur lesquels je vais exposer mes
conjectures.

" Lorsque je suis pres et vis-a-vis le malade, je sens la reaction de son
travail dans la partie opposee ; de sorte qu'une douleur au foie se fait sentir
a ma rate ou dans les parties adjacentes, et celle de la rate se fait sentir
a mon foie. Une douleur ou un tiraillement a Fepaule ou a la jambe droite
m'est sensible a 1'epaule ou a la jambe gauche. Les reins font le meme
efiet. Observez que je ne parle que de parties oppose"es les unes aux
autres, comme les tempes, les yeux, les oreilles, &c. Lorsque toute la tete
est afiecte'e, la mienne s'en ressent, et 1'estomac repond a mon estomac.
Les memes efiets ont lieu lorsque je suis proche du malade, et assis a son
cote". J'ai ete quelquefois oblig^ de changer de place a 1'orchestre de nos
spectacles, parce que je me trouvais incommode d'un mal de tete, de foie,
ou de rate d'un de mes voisins. Ces sensations de*sagre"ables se dissipaient
par 1'eloignement et par la distraction.

"J'ai remarque* que je ne recevais de ces impressions distinctes que de la
part des personnes dont je m'occupais, soit par la conversation, soit par
d'autres rapports. II ne faut pas croire que dans de pareilles circonstances

i.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 331

un mal le"ger ou une douleur passagere puisse porter des impressions
sensibles ; elles ne le deviennent que lorsque le mal est considerable. Je
ne me suis apercju de ces effets que depuis que je magnetise, apparemment
parceque je suis habitue" a porter mon attention sur mes sensations internes.

" II m'est arrive" tres-souvent de m'occuper fortement de quelques
personnes avec lesquelles j'avais de grands rapports. Ma pensee se
dirigeant vers les principales parties de leur corps, leur reaction me faisait
sentir tres-distinctement dans les parties correspondantes du mien, les
differentes sensations que ces personnes e*prouveraient dans ce moment.
Faits tres-certains pour moi, et pour les personnes a qui je l'e"crivais, en
leur de*taillant les sensations qu'elles avaient e'prouve'es, les places et
1'heure precise. Ce que je viens de rapporter m'a prouve" que la pensde
produisait une action tres-vive, dont la reaction portait sur nos sens des
impressions tres-distinctes.

" Je ne parle point icide plusieurs personnes que j'ai mises en somnam-
bulisme, ou que j'ai tiroes de cet e*tat a un eloignement assez grand."

Such general descriptions are very far from convincing ; l and
Lausanne gives the details of only one success, which, though certainly
striking, may have been accidental. I may add, for comparison, a
statement made to me by an amateur hypnotist, Mr. J. H. Fash, in
whose good faith I have every confidence, but who has again failed
to make the detailed notes without which such observations, in what-
ever quantity accumulated, will never make a chapter of science. It
is possible that the mention of the type here may serve to elicit

further instances.

" 9, Commerce Street, Glasgow.

"July 28th, 1885.

" Instead of impressing my ' subjects ' they seem to impress me ; and
should they chance to have any soreness or pain in any part of the body,
I feel it in a corresponding part of mine as soon as I have commenced
mesmerising them ; and it sometimes remains with me for a considerable
time after. In this way I am often able to discern aches or pains in
various persons, who have afterwards stated that they felt relieved. Just
this moment as I write, I am suffering from a severe soreness in the region
of the spleen, and a feeling as of dyspepsia or indigestion at the stomach,
and on making remarks to the sensitive a few minutes since that I felt
this, he replied, ' I felt that way before you mesmerised me but I am all
right now.' "

§ 2. The following examples of the silent power of the will in
producing the hypnotic condition, or in evoking particular actions on

1 The author of Reflexions Impartiales sur le Magnttisme Animal (1784) says that he
witnessed similar phenomena several times at Lyons : " Les differentes somnambules
qui ont servi aux experiences sont des filles du peuple. On leur a pr^sente1, des sujets
malades qui leur etaient inconnus. Elles ont indique] avec la plus grande exactitude les
maux dpnt elles etaient affected : je les ai vues ressentir vivement les maux de ceux qu'elles
magne"tisaient, et les manif ester en portant les mains sur elles aux mSmes parties."
Bertrand remarks on the similarity of Carre de Montgeron's account of the St. M&lard
" convulsionnaires." But the lack of detail and corroboration must of course prevent such
evidence from having any independent weight.

332 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

i

the part of hypnotised persons, are analogous to those recorded in
Vol. I., pp. 88-94. The first account is taken from the TraiU du
Somnambulisme, (Paris, 1823, pp. 246-7) of Dr. Alexandre Bertrand,
a physician of repute, whose works give the impression of having
been written in a spirit of rational scepticism.

" J'avais coutume de faire sortir une malade du somnambulisme en lui
faisant de legeres frictions sur les bras ; et cette manoeuvre, qui ne 1'eVeil-
lait pas dans le courant de la stance, ne manquait jamais de produire cet
effet a la fin, quand j 'avals 1'intention de la faire sortir du sommeil. Un
jour je fis, a la fin de la stance, mes frictions accoutumees, en lui disant,
' Aliens, allons, eVeillez-vous ' — et pendant ce temps j 'avals la ferme volonte*
de ne pas 1'eVeiller. La malade parut d'abord visiblement trouble'e, puis
tout-a-coup son visage rougit beaucoup, ses traits s'alte'rerent, et elle eut
quelques mouvements convulsifs, sans sortir pourtant de l'e*tat de somnam-
bulisme. J'employai alors toute ma volont^ a la calmer ; et quand je la
vis enfin redevenue tranquille, ' Qu'avez vous done,' lui dis-je, ' qui vous
a fait avoir des convulsions ? ' ' Comment,' me re'pondit-elle, ' vous me
dites de m'eveiller, et vous ne voulez pas que je m'eveille.' "

Bertrand, whose treatment of the subject is thoroughly cautious
and sensible, records (p. 280), a more ' ordinary case of thought-
transference, in which the " subject " and the agent were both known
to him, on the authority of the latter, who had his complete con-
fidence ; but he declines to commit himself to results which he had
witnessed without having an intimate acquaintance with the persons
concerned.

The next case was reported by Mr. Charles Richet to the Socie'te'
de Psychologie Physiologique, and appeared in the Revue Philo-
sophique for February, 1886, p. 199.

(362) M. Richet begins by saying that, in spite of repeated trials, he
has only on one occasion obtained satisfactory evidence of the induction of
hypnotic trance at a distance. This was in 1873, when he was " interne "
at the Beaujon Hospital. The "subject" was a woman whom he had
frequently hypnotised.

" D'abord je Fendormais par des passes ; puis, plus tard, en lui touchant
la main ; puis enfin, simplement, en entrant dans la salle.

" Le matin, quand j'entrais dans la salle avec mon chef de service, M. le
professeur Le Fort, je la voyais aussitot, dans le fond de la salle ou elle
e'tait, s'endormir. Mais, comme je ne voulais pas qu'elle fut dans cet etat
au moment ou M. Le Fort serait a c6td d'elle je faisais tout mes efforts
pour la reVeiller mentalement ; et, de fait, elle se reVeillait toujours
quelques instants avant que M. Le Fort arrivat au lit No. 11.

" S'agissait-il re"ellement d'un acte de volonte* de ma part, soit pour la
reVeiller, soit pour 1'endormir ; ou bien s'endormait-elle et se reVeillait-
elle spontane'ment ? C'est la un point que je n'ai jamais pu bien e'tablir.
Et si, comme je vais le raconter, I'expeYience n'avait pas e'te' fait d'une
autre maniere, ce sommeil et ce reVeil ne prouveraient absolument rien.

I.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 333

" Un jour, etant avec mes collegues, a la salle de garde, h dejeuner —
notre confrere M. Landouzy, alors interne comme moi k 1'hopital Beaujon,
etait present — j'assurai que je pouvais endorniir cette malade a distance,
et que je la ferais venir, a la salle de garde ou nous e'tions, rien que par un
acte de ma volonte. Mais au bout de dix minutes personne n'e'tant venu,
1'experience fut consideYee comme ayant ^choud.

" En re'alite' 1'experience n'avait pas e'choue' ; car quelque temps apres,
on vint me pr^venir que la malade se promenait dans les couloirs, endormie,
cherchant a me parler et ne me trouvant pas ; et, en effet, il en etait ainsi,
sans que je puisse de sa part obtenir d'autre re'ponse pour expliquer son
sommeil et cette promenade vagabonde, sinon qu'elle desirait me parler.

" Une autre fois, j'ai re'pe'te' cette experience en la variant de la maniere
suivante. Je priai deux de mes collegues de se rendre dans la salle, sous
le pretexte d'examiner une malade quelconque ; en re'alite afin d'observer
comment se comporterait le No. 11, que j'aurais, a ce moment, 1'intention
d'endormir. Quelque temps apres ils vinrent me dire que 1'experience
avait e'choue'. Cependant, cette fois encore, elle avait re*ussi. Car on
s'etait trompe' en d^signant a la place du No. 11 la malade voisine, qui
naturellement etait restee parfaitemeiit eveill^e, tandis que le No. 11
s'etait effectivement endormie.

" J'aurais du sans doute r^p^ter et varier avec plus de precision cette
experience int^ressante ; mais en pareille matiere on ne fait pas tout ce
qu'on desire faire, et ceux-la seuls qui ont experimente peuvent savoir
quelles difficultes de toute sortes, morales et autres, empechent la
poursuite methodique de 1'experimentation.

" Quelques semaines apres, la malade retourna dans son pays, a
Beziers, je crois, et je n'ai plus entendu parler d'elle. «« QH B,IC.HET "

The next example, from Professer Beaunis, of Nancy, is published
in the same number of the Revue Philosophique, p. 204. The
concluding sentences of his account, as the admission of a physiologist
of high repute, are of good omen for the future of our subject in
France. The experiment was made in conjunction with our friend,
Dr. LieT)eault.

(363) " Le sujet est un jeune homme, tres bon somnambule, bien
portant, un peu timide. II accompagnait chez M. Liebeault sa cousine,
tres bonne somnambule aussi, et qui est traitee par 1'hypnotisme pour des
accidents nerveux.

" M. Liebeault endort le sujet et lui dit pendant son sommeil : ' A
votre reveil vous executerez 1'acte qui vous sera ordonne mentalement par
les personnes presentes.' J'ecris alors au crayon sur un papier ces mots :
' Embrasser sa cousine.' Ces mots ecrits, je montre le papier au Dr.
Liebeault et aux quelques personnes presentes, en leur recommandant de le-
lire des yeux seulement, et sans prononcer meme des levres une seule de"s
paroles qui s'y trouve, et j'ajoute : ' A son reveil, vous penserez fortement
a Facte qu'il doit executer, sans rien dire et sans faire aucun signe qui
puisse le mettre sur la voie.' On reveille alors le sujet et nous attendons
tous le resultat de 1'experience. Peu apres son reveil, nous le voyons rire
et se cacher la figure dans ses mains, et ce manege continue quelque temps

334 SUPPLEMENT, [CHAP.

sans autre re"sultat. Je lui demande alors : ( Qu'avez-vous ? ' ' Rien.' ' A
quoi pensez vous ? ' Pas de r^ponse. ' Vous savez,' lui dis-je, ' que vous
devez faire quelque chose a quoi nous pensions. Si vous ne voulez pas le
faire, dites-nous au moins a quoi vous pensez.' ' Non.' Alors je lui dis :
' Si vous ne voulez pas le dire tout haut, dites-le-moi bas a 1'oreille,' et je
m'approche de lui. ' A embrasser ma cousine,' me dit-il. Une fois le
premier pas fait, le reste de la suggestion mentale s'accomplit de bonne grace.
" Y a-t-il eu simple coincidence? Ce serait bien e'tonnant. A-t-il pu,
pendant son sommeil, reconnaitre le sens des paroles que j'e'crivais a la
fagon dont je les e'crivais sur le papier, ou a-t-il pu les voir ? C'est bien
peu supposable. Enfin je suis sur qu'aucune des personnes pre'sentes n'a
pu le mettre d'une fagon quelconque sur la voie de 1'acte qu'il devait
accomplir. II y a la eVidemment quelque chose qui bouleverse toutes les
ide'es regues sur les fonctions du cerveau, et pour ma part, jusqu' a ces
derniers temps, j'e*tais parfaitement incre'dule sur les faits de ce genre.
Aujourd'hui j 'arrive a cette conviction qu'il ne faut pas les repousser, les
cas de re"ussite, quoique rares, e*tant trop nombreux pour etre un simple
effet de hasard. « H BEAUNIS."

§ 3. To pass now to transferences of ideas unconnected with
movement (Vol. I., pp. 94-6), the next two incidents are again reported
by a French physician of high standing — not, however, as personal
observations, but apparently as attested by another medical man.
They occur in Dr. Macario's work, Du' Sommeil, des Reves, et du
Somnambulisme (Lyons, 1857), pp. 185-6.

(364 and 365) " Un soir le docteur Gromier, apres avoir endormi par la
magnetisation une femme hysteYique, demanda au mari de cette femme la
permission de faire une experience, et voici ce qui se passa. Sans mot dire, il
la conduisit en pleine mer, mentalement, bien entendu ; la malade f ut tran-
quille tant que le calme dura sur les eaux ; mais bientdt le magne'tiseur
souleva dans sa pense*e une effroyable tempete, et la malade se mit aussitot
a pousser des cris pergants, et a se cramponner aux objets environnants ;
sa voix, ses larmes, 1'expression de sa physionomie indiquaient une frayeur
terrible. Alors il ramena successivement, et toujours par la pense'e, les
vagues dans les limites raisonnables. Elles cesserent d'agiter le navire, et
suivant le progres de leur abaissement, le calme rentra dans Fesprit de la
somnambule, quoiqu' elle conservat encore une respiration haletante et un
tremblement nerveux dans tous ses membres. ' Ne me ramenez jamais en
mer,' s'e"cria-t-elle un instant apres, avec transport; 'j'ai trop peur, et ce
miserable de capitaine qui ne voulait pas nous laisser monter sur le pont ! '
'Cette exclamation nous bouleversa d'autant plus,' dit M. Gromier, ' que je
n'avais pas prononce" une seule parole qui put lui indiquer la nature de
rexpe"rience que j'avais 1'intention de faire.'

" Une autre fois, cette meme malade etait en proie a un profond de"ses-
poir. Voici ce que son me'decin, le docteur Gromier, imagina pour ranimer
son courage. Elle dormait d'un sommeil magne'tique. Pourquoi, lui dit-il
mentalement, perdre ainsi Tesp^rance 1 Vous etes pieuse, la sainte Vierge
viendra a votre secours, et vous gudrirez, soyez-en-sure. Puis il de"couvrit,
par sa pens^e, le toit de la maison ; dans les angles il groupa des images

i.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 335

portant des che'rubins, et au milieu il fit descendre dans un globe de
lumiere la sainte Vierge, dans toute la splendeur de sa magnificence. La
somnambule tomba aussitot dans le ravissement, dans 1'extase, se prosterna
a terre, et s'e'cria dans le plus grand transport, ' Ah ! mon Dieu, depuis
si longtemps que je prie la Vierge Marie, voila la premiere fois qu'elle
vient a mon secours. ' '

[If correctly reported, these results seem to go beyond what can reason-
ably be attributed to unconscious physical indications on the experimenter's
part.]

Quite parallel to such cases as these is the form of experimental
telepathy for which there is perhaps most evidence in the older
records — though it is one which we have never personally encountered
— that where some place or scene, familiar to someone present, has
been accurately described by a hypnotised " subject " who had no
previous knowledge of it. The phenomenon has been almost always
set down to independent clairvoyance — an explanation for which
there has, in most cases, been little or no warrant. A single instance
must suffice, and I select one from the late Sergeant Cox's Mechanism
of Man (Vol. II., p. 220).

" One instance, within my personal experience, will suffice to give the
reader a clear conception of the character of this very curious psychological
phenomenon. The somnambule was a little girl, aged only 10 years. She
was invited to go (mentally) with me to Somersetshire. She described
accurately my father's house there — the verandah and the glass doors
opening to the garden. Asked if she could see anything in the room ?
' Oh, yes ! ' she said, ' such a funny chair, it rolls about.' (It was an
American rocking-chair.) 'Anything more?' 'Yes — pictures.' 'Tell
me what they are about.' ' One is a house pulled to pieces.' (There was
a drawing on the wall of the ruins of an abbey.) 'Any more?' 'Yes ;
the sky is on fire ; horses are jumping about.' (It was a large painting of
a storm, and horses struck by lightning.) ' Anything more ? ' 'A river
runs by the side of the house.' (Right.) I should state that the child
had never been out of London.

"A friend who was present accidentally, then asked to be allowed to
question her. He was placed en rapport with her simply by my
removing my hand and giving her hand to him. Re-establishment
of this relationship was essential to the production of the phenomena.1
As I had never seen my friend's house, I cannot vouch for her
accuracy with him as with myself; but I had his assurance that it
was equally correct. I should state that neither of us gave the child
the slightest intimation by word or look ; indeed, we did nothing but
put questions. My friend's house was at Dover. She described some,
of the way down — such as the tunnel and the cliffs. ' Now,' she said,
' I see a row of houses, and such a lot of steps to get to them.' ' Go with

1 In such a case as this, contact cannot be held to give an opportunity for information
by unconscious physical signs. Whether the effect that it has consists in more than
symbolising to the "subject" a condition of confidence and rapport, is a doubtful and
interesting question.

336 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

me up the steps of the third house.' ' Yes.' ' Now we go in ; what do
you see there ? ' ' Something like a monkey and some horns.' (Bight.)
' Now go into the room on the left.' ' Yes ; such a lot of books about ;
there is a horrid thing on the chimney-piece.' (It was a skull.) ' There's
a portrait of a gentleman's head over it.' (It was a portrait.) ' Now
we will go upstairs.' What a beautiful room, and oh ! what a beautiful
lady.' ' What is she doing 1 ' ' Oh, no ; it's a picture, I mean, with
such a beautiful dress, and she has a hat on ; how funny.' (It was the
full length portrait of a lady in a riding-habit.) She stated much besides,
which my friend stated to be correct. Then she added, ' There's a young
lady with long yellow curls looking out of window.' He whispered to me,
' She is wrong there. I have a niece with such hair, but she is from
home. She reads the picture in my mind.' My friend returned to
Dover the next day, and the following post brought me a letter stating
that he was surprised to find that his niece had returned unexpectedly,
and was in the drawing-room as described, but she believes she was not
at the window."

I will now give a case — rather remote in time, but resting on the
first-hand testimony of living witnesses — which is remarkable for the
long continuance of the telepathic susceptibility. The narrator is
Mrs. Pinhey, of 18, Bassett Road, Ladbroke Grove Road, W. ; her
record, written out for us in 1883, is at any rate given under a strong
sense of responsibility.

(366) " I have been asked to write down what I can remember of a
very curious experience in mesmeric or animal magnetism, which I under-
took and carried on for many months, more than 30 years ago.

" The difficulty of doing this accurately after so great a lapse of time is,
I am aware, very great ; and unfortunately, the diary which I kept for the
greater part of the time is of the most meagre description, and can scarcely
be said to do more than record the fact of the seances having been carried
on daily with little intermission from the beginning of March, 1850, all
through the summer of that year, until the end of October, when I left
home for several weeks. On my return they were recommenced, and it
was during that winter that the most remarkable thought-reading pheno-
mena occurred ; but I seem, meanwhile, to have discontinued my diary
altogether, so that, though the main facts are so impressed on my memory
that I cannot forget them, I feel the necessity for extreme caution in re-
lating them, having nothing but my memory on which to depend — not
even the occasional hints which, in the diary of the previous summer, have
helped to bring back some circumstances to my mind, to fix the dates of
others, and to show the general rate of progress in the experiments, which
I had imagined to be much less gradual than it really was.

[The writer then describes how, having in 1849 heard a lecture on
mesmerism as applied to disease, she resolved to try to influence a relative
of her own, who was suffering from epilepsy. She failed and was consider-
ably discouraged ; but determined to make one more attempt with another
" subject."]

" Miss M. N. was a parishioner of my father's. She and her sister lived

i.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 337

together on very small means, their circumstances having been much
reduced at the time of the death of their parents, and M. was dreadfully
afflicted with a chronic kind of St. Vitus' dance, besides other ailments.
I visited her frequently, and as I looked on at her never-ceasing movement,
her mouth and eyes twitching and her whole body jerking up and down
from morning till night, to such an extent that she could not even feed
herself, it occurred to me that hers was a fitting subject for mesmerism.
What a boon would an hour or two of perfect rest be to such a person !
At any rate, I would talk to her about it, and make my next attempt on
her, if she would consent to my doing so.

" She had become very fond of me during our intercourse, and I had no
difficulty in persuading her to allow me to do anything I liked to her ; but
some of her friends objected at first, having a sort of idea that mesmerism
was a ' black art,' and not to be meddled with. My father's opinion,
however, as clergyman of the parish, and my own reputation as the clergy-
man's daughter, prevailed so far that I was allowed to proceed without
active opposition.

" At this time I had no expectation of any marvellous results. I did
hope that I might succeed in quieting her nerves and muscles, and giving
rest, if not sleep, for a few hours every day, and that this rest might have
a beneficial effect upon my patient's health. But though I expected
nothing, I was prepared for anything, i.e., I was fully impressed with the
necessity of keeping my own nerves quiet and unmoved under any circum-
stances. I rather dreaded than hoped that things might happen to
' astonish me ' ; but, if they did, I was prepared to look at them with
as much calmness and philosophy as I could command.

" I think it was on the second occasion, that, viz., of March 5th, noted
in my journal, that I succeeded in inducing the mesmeric sleep, a state at
that time of perfect repose, not unlike natural sleep — except that the
muscles remained rigid enough to keep my patient sitting upright leaning
back in the chair. She showed no disposition to lie down. In this
condition I left her, at first with directions to her sister not to touch or
disturb her until she awoke of herself, which she did in about an hour.
As time went on, however, and the mesmeric influence gained greater
power over her, I found it better to stay with her for an hour or two, and
wake her before I left. Otherwise she seemed never to awake quite
perfectly, but remained for some hours in a dreamy state after the actual
sleep had left her.

" I cannot recollect, however, exactly the time when this change was.
made, but it must have been very early in the course of the stances, because
on the 13th, after a week in which I had visited her every day, I find, in
addition to the usual entry, ' Mesmerised M. N".,' the word ' Discoveries,'
and that my mother was present, so that I must then have remained with
her during the sleep.

"The 'Discoveries' and 'New Discoveries' entered on the 14th,
referred to phenomena which, happening to myself in this way, with every .
possible guarantee for their perfect truth and reality, necessarily made a
great impression on all our minds. They were, it is true, only the intro-
duction to a series of much greater wonders, but, being the first, they
surprised and startled us almost more than those which came after.

" The first unusual appearance that presented itself was a sort of
VOL. n. z

338 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

magnetic attraction towards myself. I noticed that whenever I moved
about the room to fetch a book or my knitting, or perhaps to eat some
biscuits or sandwiches (for I often took my luncheon with me to save
time), her face turned towards me. I tried, by way of experiment, to get
quite behind the chair on which she sat, with her eyes closed and quite
still up to this time ; but she shuffled about in her seat and made every
effort to turn round so as to face me. Presently her arm stretched itself
out with a mechanical kind of motion and pointed at me wherever I moved.
About this time, too, she began to talk.

" Her voice and manner of speaking when asleep were much more
animated and decided than when awake. Instead of a poor, weak, invalid
kind of creature, she became quite a clever, animated talker. Instead of
the humility and self-depreciation of her waking hours, she appeared quite
pleased with herself and confident in her own opinions. It was very
curious to watch her, with her eyes always shut, and her forehead rather
pressed forward, as if that were the seat and medium of both sight and
understanding. Sometimes she nipped her brows and a puzzled look came
over her face, and then a bright smile seemed to show that all was clear
again. But this is rather anticipating, for at first she spoke little and
rather hesitatingly, except in answer to questions which I soon began to
put to her.

" ' Why do you point at me, Mary ? '

" Mary : ' 0, I don't know, but I feel as if I wanted — wanted to get
near you. It is very funny, such a funny feeling. I can't help it. Now,
you are not angry, are you ? '

" The last sentence she very often used with a deprecating air and voice.

" Meanwhile the attraction became stronger every day till it caused her
to stand upright and walk after me ; a thing she could not do when awake,
and had not done for many months or even years.

"All this, of course, interested me extremely, and my mother and
father occasionally went with me to see the marvels I reported, and satisfy
themselves of their reality. I thought, however, that all this walking
about and general excitement might not be so good for my patient as a
quieter rest would be. Besides, the clinging to me was rather troublesome
and difficult to arrange for; so when her attentions in this way became too
pressing, I told her rather peremptorily to go back to her chair and
sit down, which, with some difficulty and exertion, she at last managed to
do — sighing a little and begging me not to be angry with her, as she
would do always what I wished if she possibly could, but it was very
hard, &c.

" After that I found that she would always obey any command I gave
her ; and though I never tried her to that extent, I believe she would
have hopped on one leg if I had ordered her to do so.

" By degrees, as time went on, I noticed that the attraction became
fainter. I cannot now remember how much time elapsed before a new
phase of the mesmeric state began to show itself. I notice that on the
30th March my father went with me 'to see the wonders I reported,'
and on the 7th April the stance is marked as 'very successful,' but I
think that both these entries must refer to the first phase, viz., the
attraction already described.

i.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 339

"It was, however, about this time or a little later that, after a few
quiet uneventful days, as I was sitting at work or reading in the same room
with her, I observed that any little movement of my hands or feet was
being repeated in a mechanical kind of way by my patient. As I worked,
her right hand went up and down as if using her needle. If I moved my
finger or thumb, hers moved too. If I lifted my hand to my face hers
attempted immediately to follow the motion ; and she then began also to
associate herself with me in her speech — ' This work tires us very much,
doesn't it, dear 1 ' — or if I wagged my finger experimentally and well out of
her sight (supposing she could see), she would say, ' Well ! I don't know
why we should make this poor finger work so hard, wag, wag, it is quite
laughable.'

" This sort of thing, which I shall call ' sympathy,' went on for some
time, increasing in intensity as the ' attraction ' had done, and then slowly
dying out as before, till it gave place to new and still more wonderful
phenomena. That is to say, the mere outward mechanical expression of
sympathy wore out ; but all the succeeding phenomena may be classed
under the same head. The influence only went deeper and affected by
degrees more important organs, the senses, and finally the brain itself.

" It was some time in that summer that I was sitting or standing near
the window of her room, eating the cake or sandwich or whatever my
lunch consisted of that day. ' M.' was in the mesmeric sleep, but had
been less interesting than usual for some days. I was not watching her
particularly, when rather a curious sound attracted my attention. I
looked at her, and saw that she was apparently eating something very nice,
munching away and enjoying the taste extremely.

" ' What have you got there, Mary 1 ' I said.

" ' Oh ! Why of course you know. We — we are eating our lunch, and
it is very nice. We have got some cake to-day, and it is very good.'

" ' That is right ; then we will have some more.' So saying, I went to
the little corner cupboard where I always deposited my luncheon and
took, not cake this time, but a piece of dry bread.

" ' Well, yes, bread is very good, but it is not so nice as the cake. We
must not be discontented ; but there is plenty more cake — why don't we
eat it ? Ah, I know,' with a laugh of triumph, ' you think I can't taste it,
but that is nonsense. Of course we eat together,' and so on. I tried her
in all kinds of ways, tasted salt and then sugar, then pepper, and did my
best to puzzle her, but she never hesitated or made a mistake.

" I find in my journal various entries during the summer, showing the
names of several persons who witnessed the facts I am relating. Amongst
them, on May 21st, is that of Dr. H., a local celebrity, who lived next
door to us, and was an intimate friend of my father's. He had formerly,
at the request of the latter, seen ' M. NV more than once, and now, on the
20th, he had been brought by my father to visit her again, and had con-
fessed, though much prejudiced against mesmerism, that her health was
certainly improved.

" The next day, however, when he came on purpose to see the wonders
my father had described to him, the stance was a failure. The sleep took
place as usual, but the patient remained apparently dumb. Whether the
fact of his incredulity had, or could have any direct effect upon the
patient, I cannot, with my limited experience, decide ; but I am inclined

VOL. II. Z 2

340 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

to suspect that the failure was due to my nerves being upset by the know-
ledge that the doctor had come on purpose to criticise. I know that I
was extremely anxious that he should see the things which I saw day
after day, and be convinced that at any rate I and my whole family were
not the credulous fools he secretly suspected us of being, but that
appearances, at any rate, justified our belief. This anxiety, and the
nervousness produced by it, were, I believe, the sole cause of failure.

" No one (except perhaps my mother, who went very often) ever saw
my patient at her best ; the same cause operating, only in a less degree,
whenever the se'ance was in any way made a medium of sightseeing. And
this leads me to remark that when these results are produced by trickery,
or mechanism, they can be repeated any number of times with perfect
precision and regularity ; but when they come to us as the effect of
experiments having to do with unknown or unexplained forces, we must
expect to be often baffled, not knowing fully the conditions under which
those forces act.

" With occasional interruptions, varying from a day or two to a week
or two, the stances were continued daily all through the summer, and
were witnessed by several persons at different times, besides the members
of my own family. I find the names of seven people, many of whom are
still living, who were present — some of them more than once — either in
that summer or the winter following.

"I cannot now remember whether any real 'thought-reading' had
begun before I left home for several weeks on October 24th. That it did
so very shortly after my return is certain, from the following circum-
stances, which, though of a private nature, must be mentioned in order to
make the rest of my story intelligible.

" It was during this absence that I became engaged to be married to
a gentleman belonging to the Indian Civil Service. Circumstances made
it expedient at the time to keep the matter quiet, and it was known only
to my parents and immediate relations. The gentleman had gone to
India immediately after our engagement, and I returned home to my
usual occupations as if nothing had happened. No one in the town
knew anything about it then, or till some weeks afterwards, yet I had no
sooner magnetised my patient than she began talking as if all the facts
were perfectly familiar to her. ' India is a long way off, isn't it, dear ?
I wish we could be nearer home, but, of course, if he is there we must
go too.' In fact for months she could talk of little else when mesmerised,
and knew my husband's name, age, and appearance, but was as ignorant
as the rest of the world when in her natural state.

" Gradually this knowledge of all that I knew became more and more
complete, and, accustomed as I was by this time to such marvels, she
sometimes fairly astonished me. One day she suddenly burst out laugh-
ing. ' Oh, what a hurry we were in, how we did fly down the stairs ! ' I
looked up, ' What are you talking about ? When do you mean ? ' ' Why,
you know, this morning, and dear papa was waiting ; he doesn't like us
to be late for prayers. But we only just wanted to finish that sentence.'
My curiosity was thoroughly aroused now, and I inquired, 'What
sentence ? ' ' Why, the German book — Schiller, wasn't it 1 ' It was per-
fectly true, though the fact had made but a slight impression upon me,
and I had certainly not thought of it again until thus reminded of it,

i.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 341

that I had been reading German upstairs that morning until the prayer
bell rang, and then, lingering for a moment to finish a sentence, I had
rushed hastily downstairs to avoid being late.

"This and other phenomena of the same kind puzzled me a great
deal ; not the fact of her knowing what I knew, for with that idea I
was by this time familiar ; but the thing which I could not understand
was her brain being acted upon by such apparently trifling occurrences.
I could perceive that things which had greatly impressed my brain might
be repeated in hers, as the deflections of one needle are repeated by
another at the opposite pole of the electric current. When I asked her a
question, my brain probably gave the answer which hers repeated, but
why did she spontaneously drag up little things which I had forgotten ?
Sometimes she even introduced little conversations between my father
and mother which had taken place in my presence. ' Dear mamma was
vexed,' she began one day, and then came particulars of some little
argument between my father and mother, which I had heard at the time
but had never thought of again, and certainly never repeated.1 I have
often thought over this difficulty since, but cannot in the least explain it
except upon the supposition that certain things do impress our brains
more strongly than others, although we may be unconscious of the fact.
It is a line of inquiry which I should think might be worth pursuing in
the interests of physical science, if any physician of note could so far shake
off all prejudice as to make experiments for himself.

" I have only a few more wonders to relate, and they are all of the
same kind. One day, during the winter, I was sitting by the fire opposite
to my patient, and, to pass the time, instead of working on this occasion,
I had a book. I have forgotten what it was except that it was a novel,
one of Dickens' I think. Suddenly she began to laugh. I looked up,
and saw her with her eyes shut as usual, but her head moving as if
reading with her forehead, and her mouth smiling. ' What are you
laughing at?' 'Why at the story, of course.' 'What story?' And she
told me what I was reading about, making her comments on the
characters, and expressing her amusement at some passages, and her sorrow
at anything pathetic which I came to in the course of my reading.2 I
asked her the page and she told me. I asked her whereabouts in the
page certain passages were, and she told me that also. I tried her with
written letters and figures, and put her power to all kinds of tests, and the
result always was that she knew what I knew but nothing beyond. She
was never what is popularly known as ' clairvoyante.'

" I mention this particularly, because it was a point which I took
great pains to ascertain ; and several times when I asked her questions
about people and things at a distance, her answers were so decided, and
her knowledge apparently so minute and circumstantial that I was very
nearly deceived into believing it to be true. But on every occasion of the
sort, I found, on inquiry, that truth and fiction were mixed up together.
Everything which I knew myself was true. But the particular facts*

1 This phenomenon is equally interesting whether it be regarded as an instance of an
impression deferred for some time before emerging into the percipient's consciousness,
or as an impression derived at the moment from an unconscious or sub-conscious stratum
of the agent's mind.

2 Of. cases 149 and 407.

342 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

which were happening at the moment, and which she described as if she
saw them, were purely imaginary.

" One remarkable instance in illustration of this I will relate. It
happened during the summer, or early spring, of 1851. My married sister,
with her husband and children, were expected at a vicarage 9 or 10 miles
off, to pay a visit to his father. I knew this, and was, therefore, not
surprised when she began to talk about it. Here, I thought, is a good
opportunity to test her clairvoyance, so I said, ' Oh, yes, we knew they
were to come to-day, but have they arrived ? Look and tell me 1 ' After a
short pause she began in rather an excited way, ' Yes, yes, I see them all
just getting out of the carriage.' ' Whom do you see 1 ' I asked. ' I see

Mr. and Mrs. and the nurse, and so many children. They are

going into the house, into the drawing-room on the left of the hall.' She
then described the vicarage, the drive up to it, and many other particulars
with what I knew to be perfect accuracy, and her whole story was so
likely, so much what I expected to happen, that I was quite prepared to
have the whole confirmed on inquiry. But it was not so. In the first
place, the train had been late, and the party did not arrive until an hour
or two later ; and, in the second place, my brother-in-law was detained at
his own vicarage, many miles away, and never arrived at all at that time.

" On another occasion, some information she gave me about Mr. ,

in India, though very likely and plausible, turned out to be incorrect.

" Her thought-reading was always perfect, but the clairvoyance always
failed when accurately tested; and though I know how fallacious an
opinion based on one experiment must often be, and also that there is
plenty of good evidence for the truth of clairvoyance, I have sometimes
speculated whether, if any apparent case of clairvoyance were accurately
inquired into, it would not often be found to have its origin in ' thought-
reading.' [See above, pp. 329 and 335.]

" Towards the end of the summer of 1851, I gave up magnetising ' M.'
as a regular thing. Her health was much improved, and she lived for
many years afterwards, only occasionally troubled with the St. Vitus'
dance, at which times my mother or one of my sisters took my place, and
generally succeeded in quieting her.

" It was rather a trouble to me that after the first few weeks 1 scarcely
saw ' M. ' in her natural state. She was so sensitive to my presence that
before I entered her room she was already half gone, and it was only at
the end of each stance, when, with much difficulty, by means of upward
passes, fanning, and other expedients I had succeeded in waking her, that
I could communicate with her real self. I hoped that my long absence in
India, eight years, would have worn out this influence ; but when at last
I returned home and went to see her, I found her already lapsing into the
trance, and had great difficulty in keeping her out of it during my visit. I
believe that a more experienced and skilful operator could have prevented
this in the beginning, and throughout the course it was always a subject of
regret to me. " M. A. P."

Two other witnesses of this percipient's powers have supplied the
following testimony. Mrs. D'Oyly writes on Nov. 24, 1885 : —

" 24, Westbourne Terrace, W.
" DEAR SIR, — My sister, Mrs. Pinhey, has to-day forwarded me a

i.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 343

letter of yours of July 30th. I had not seen her article [i.e., the account
just quoted], nor did I know till to-day that she had written one. It is
difficult to know what corroborative evidence is required, but my own
personal experience with Mary Naylor, my sister's patient, is curious and
interesting, and I fancy almost identically the same as my sister's. On
Mrs. Pinhey leaving England, I took up the case just where she left it.
In every respect the same phenomena occurred with me as a mesmeriser as
when my sister operated. My patient knew the contents of my letters, every
thought of my mind ; she would discuss the theatre, or the ball, or party,
or church I might have been at since I had last visited her, and talked it
all over as if she had been present; but sometimes, if a third person
happened to be present, I would be a little nervous lest something should
come out which I did not wish mentioned, but my inward fear would
immediately make her cautious, and she would say, ' Oh, we must not talk
about such-and-such things to-day, must we?' Sometimes during the
seance she would complain of hunger. I would go to the cupboard, turn my
back to prevent her seeing, and taste different things ; she could always
tell what particular thing I was eating, liked and disliked what / liked
and disliked, and when I had had enough her appetite was satisfied. Mrs.
Pinhey was totally unprepared for everything that happened, and each
new phenomenon astonished her quite as much as it did outsiders. .

" Her ' clairvoyance ' was limited to this : that she knew any and
every thing her mesmeriser knew, but no more. For instance, we would
ask her for particulars of an absent sailor brother ; her answer would be
vague and ' guessing,' and always turned out to be merely the reflections
of our own minds.

" As Mrs. Pinhey and I have had no communication on this topic, I
hope my observations may be considered ' corroborative evidence.' — Believe
me, yours faithfully, « EMMA S. D'OYLY."

Mrs. Ogle writes on the same date : —

" Sedgeford Vicarage, King's Lynn.

" SIR, — I have been asked by my cousin, Mrs. Pinhey, if I remember
seeing a girl, Mary Naylor (at Bury St. Edmunds), who was very ill of St.
Vitus' Dance, and whom she mesmerised daily. As this was more than
30 years ago, I cannot recollect all I saw and heard ; but one fact
was deeply impressed on my mind, and I have often mentioned it since.
Mrs. Pinhey had that morning received a letter from India, and after she
had sent M. Naylor off to sleep, she held it up, without unfolding it, and
made the girl tell her who and where it came from and certain par-
ticulars mentioned in the letter, known only to herself. This M. Naylor
did with great reluctance, as she was overpowered with sleep, and begged
to be let alone, and it required great firmness on Mrs. Pinhey's part to
make the girl answer her questions. Mrs. Pinhey kne.w that I did not be-
lieve in mesmerism, and she was anxious that I should, see the power she
had over M. Naylor. " I am, Sir, faithfully yours,

" HENRIETTA A. OGLE." *

The following passages, bearing on telepathy, are extracted from
some " Notes on Mesmerism," kept at intervals during the last few
years, concurrently with the experiments which they record, by

344 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Captain Battersby, R.A., F.R.A.S., of Ordnance House, Enniskillen.
Both he and his mother-in-law, the percipient, Mrs. John Evens, of
Old Bank, Enniskillen, have been mentioned before (case 311). The
immediate object of the hypnotic treatment was simply the relief of
pain. The extracts comprise phenomena of various sorts. To some
of them the initials of independent observers were appended — to para-
graphs A, B, and C, those of Miss J. A. Evens, Miss M. L. Evens,
and Mrs. Battersby, and to paragraph D those of Mrs. Battersby
— with the remark : " We certify that we were eye-witnesses of the
occurrences to which our initials are appended, and that they are
correctly described."

(367) " To a question asked in a foreign language, the patient usually
replied in the same, provided that I could myself have done so. Asking
her, however, a question in German, the answer to which I could not my-
self have translated into that language, she (though herself a good German
scholar) answered only — ' Your mouth is shut.' Asked the same question
when awake, she could answer in the language at once.

(A) " As a rule she would, when asleep, translate short sentences of
Greek, Latin, or Irish, all quite unknown tongues to her, provided I knew
the translation, but not otherwise. Now and then, however, this experi-
ment failed.

" She could generally tell the time by a watch placed in her hand, the
name of a book, the original of a photograph, &c., provided all these were
known to me. "

[After describing an unusual trance which he observed in Mrs. Evens
at the time of a distant thunder-storm, the narrator goes on : — ]

" The electrical fluid in the air seemed to have excited Mrs. E. to a
very high state of thought-reading, as she now began, for the first and
only time I observed such a phenomenon, to speak of her own accord,
unquestioned, and to follow the course of my thoughts aloud now and
tl\en.

(B) " During the trance there was apparently transference of sensa-
tion, as a hair tickling my forehead, a handkerchief dipped in eau-de-
Cologne and applied to my face, &c., &c., all produced in her the correspond-
ing sensations. She could also taste what I was eating or drinking. On
one occasion strong smelling-salts applied to her nose produced no effect,
but when applied to mine she started at once.

" On one or two occasions I mesmerised her from a distance, when
in my quarters, half-a-mile off. On such occasions she was able to tell what
I had been doing, and would generally go to sleep. The sensation she
described was that of a hand pressed on her forehead. Though able
thus to send her to sleep, I was unable to keep her so, as she would waken
again the moment my attention wavered. The means used were stretching
out my hand towards her house, and bringing my will sharply to bear,
just as described in Robert Browning's fine poem on ' Mesmerism.'

(C) " After an absence of about 9 weeks I was curious to see whether

i.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 345

the force still existed unaltered, and accordingly tried the experiment,
when Mrs. E. was playing a duet on the piano, with her back towards me,
of willing her strongly to sleep. Almost at once she began to play false
notes, and soon gave up playing, saying she felt tired and the piece was a
sleepy one. I then ceased my influence, as I did not wish her to fall
asleep.

(D) " I established the fact that Mrs. E. could be mesmerised by me
without her knowledge, and awoke again so that she would have no idea
that she had been in the mesmeric sleep, but would merely think that she
had dozed for awhile. The incapability of rising by herself, however, which
was always present after the sleep, would soon inform her of the truth.

" When partially awakened by the above means [reverse passes], how-
ever, the operation could be completed by a mere effort of will on my part,
and this whether I was in the same room or no, Mrs. E. being at once
conscious of this exertion of will."

In answer to inquiries, Captain Battersby says : —

"January 20th, 1886.

" On various occasions, separated sometimes by months from each
other, I tried to mesmerise Mrs. E. from a distance ; and in a large
percentage of the cases she inquired of me, when she next saw or wrote to
me, whether I had not done so at such and such a day or hour.
At any time when in the trance, the act of looking at Mrs. E., or willing
her to open her eyes, will cause her to do so."

In a later letter he adds : —

" I am sorry that I can give you no corroborative evidence of the
mesmerism from a distance, as it was not often tried by me (for fear of
causing Mrs. E. annoyance) ; and I do not think anyone was present with
her on the occasions. She certainly was able to tell when I had been
attempting to mesmerise her ; but beyond that I cannot personally

To these hypnotic cases, I will add a couple of instances of
thought-transference where disease seems to have produced an
equally abnormal condition in the percipient. The following account
is extracted from a very remarkable record in Pe'te'tin's Electricity
Animate (Paris, 1808). Dr. Pe'te'tin had been for some time attending
a lady who suffered (among other things) from attacks of catalepsy.
He says (pp. 55-7) : —

" Je m'annonQai, comme j'avais coutume de le faire, en lui parlant sur
le bout des doigts. Elle me re"pondit, ' Vous etes paresseux ce matin, M.
le Docteur.' ' Cela est vrai, madame ; si vous en saviez la cause, vous ne
me feriez pas ce reproche.' ' Eh ! je la vois ; vous avez la migraine depuis
quatre heures, elle ne cessera qu'a six, et vous avez raison de ne rien faire
pour cette maladie, que toutes les puissances humaines ne peuvent
empecher d'avoir son cours.' ' Depuis quand etes- vous devenu me"decin 1 '
' Depuis que j'ai les yeux d' Argus.' ' Pourriez-vous me dire de quel cote'

346 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

est ma douleur ? ' ' Sur 1'oeil droit, la tempe et les dents ; je vous pre'viens
qu'elle passera a 1'oeil gauche, que vous souffrirez beaucoup entre trois
et quatre heures, et qu'a six vous aurez la tete parfaitement libre.' ' Si
vous voulez que je vous croie, il faut que vous me disiez ce que je tiens
dans la main.' Je 1'appuyai aussitot sur son estomac, et la maladie, sans
he'siter, me re'pondit, ' Je vois a travers votre main une me'daille antique.'
J'ouvre la main tout interdit ; la belle-soeur jeta les yeux sur la me'daille,
palit et se trouva mal. Revenue a elle-meme, elle renferma dans une
bonbonniere brune et a demi transparente un chiffon de papier, me donna
la boite derriere le fauteuil de sa sceur ; je 1'enveloppai de ma main, et la
pre*sentai a 1'estomac de la cataleptique, sans lui parler. ' Je vois dans
votre main une boite, et dans cette boite une lettre a mon adresse.' La
belle-sceur, e'pouvante'e, tremblait sur ses jambes ; je me hatai d'ouvrir la
boite ; j'en tirai une lettre pliee en quatre, a 1'adresse de la malade, et
timbre'e de Geneve.

" L'e'tonnement ou me jeta cette decouverte suspendit quelques
instans ma douleur, et m'ota toute • reflexion. Je trouvai le tremble-
ment de la belle-sceur tres-naturel ; elle aurait pu se trouver plus mal,
que je n' aurais pas songe a lui donner le moindre secours, et je restai
stupe"fait plus d'un quart d'heure. En revenant a moi, je demandai a la
belle-soeur, comment elle s'etait procure" la lettre qu'elle avait renferme'e
dans la bonbonniere ? Elle me re'pondit que cette lettre s'e'tait trouve'e
dans la livre qu'elle lisait, en attendant ma visite ; qu'elle 1'avait pris dans
la bibliotheque de la malade, et qu'en 1'ouvrant elle e'tait tombe'e a ses
pieds ; qu'elle 1'avait relevee et raise dans sa poche pour la lui rendre, aussitot
qu'elle serait e'veille'e. Je pris le livre et 1'examinai, comme si j'eusse du y
trouver 1'empreinte de la lettre, tant ce nouveau prodige me paraissait
incroyable ; mais me convenait-il bien d'en douter, d'apres ma propre
experience ? Etait-ce un autre qui avait mis dans ma main la me'daille
antique dont j'etais muni, avec le dessein de profiter de la premiere
occasion pour la placer sur 1'estomac de la malade, et voir si elle la
signalerait, comme d'autres objets que je lui avais presente"s 1 "

In the evening, Dr. Pe'te'tin revisited his patient. He continues
(pp. 62-5):-

(368) " Avant de sortir, je pla^ai, a tout eVenement, une petite lettre
sur le haut de ma poitrine ; je m'enveloppai de mon manteau, et n'arrivai
qu' a six heures et demie.

" Au coup de sept heures, la malade, tres-attentive, anime'e par sa
gaiete naturelle, ^prouva deux secousses dans les bras ; et dans ce court
espace de temps, ses yeux se fermerent, sa physionomie exprima 1'e'tonne-
ment, ses couleurs disparurent, et la catalepsie la transforma en statue qui
e'coute.

"J'avangai mon fauteuil pour etre plus pres de la malade. Sa tete,
toujours tourne'e du m§me c6te, ne m'offrait que son profil ; je deVeloppai
mon manteau, pour mettre le haut de mon corps a de'couvert. ' Eh !
depuis quand, M. le Docteur, la mode est-elle venue de porter ses lettres
sur la poitrine ? ' J'alongeai le bras pour atteindre du bout du doigt le
creux de 1'estomac de ma cataleptique ; et en reunissant les doigts de mon
autre main, je lui r^pondis a voix ordinaire, ' Madame, vous pourriez vous
tromper.' ' Non, je suis sure de ce que je vois. Yous avez sur la poitrine

i.] THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE IN HYPNOTIC CASES. 347

une lettre qui n'est pas plus grande que cela — qu'on 1'applique alaruesure.'
En profeYant ces paroles, elle donna une autre position a sa tete, qu'elle
dirigea de mon coti ; elle ava^a les deux bras, alongea 1'index de la main
gauche, et avec celui de la droite qu'elle posa dessus, de'terinina dans la plus
grande precision la place qu'elle devait occuper. Tous les regards tom-
berent sur moi. J'e'cartai me veste, on vit la lettre ; 1'ami s'en empara
pour 1'appliquer sur le doigt qui 1'attendait ; elle ne 1'eut pas plutot touche\
que la malade ajouta, ' Si je n'etais pas discrete, je pourrais en dire le
contenu ; mais pour prouver que je I'ai bien lue, il n'y a que deux lignes et
demie, tres-minutees.' Apres avoir obtenu la permission de 1'ouvrir,
chacun vit que le billet ne renfermait que deux lignes et demie, dont les
caracteres e'taient menus. L'ami passant tout-a-coup du plus haut degre"
d'e'tonnement a celui de la plus grande defiance, tira de sa poche une
bourse, la mit sur nia poitrine, croisa ma veste, et me poussa du cdte" de la
malade. ' M. le Docteur, ne vous genez pas ; vous avez, dans ce moment,
sur la poitrine, lafiloche de M. B. ; il y a tant de louis dun cote et d'aryent
blanc de V autre ; mais que personne ne se derange, je vais dire ce que
chacun a de plus remarquable dans ses poches.' " She fulfilled this promise.

Many other incidents are recorded in this case. Pe'te'tin himself
regards them all as clairvoyant in character ; but the hypothesis
of thought-transference was never excluded by the conditions (see
pp. 329, 335, 342).

The final instance is another extract from the Mechanism, of Man
(Vol. II., pp. 175-7). This case, like the two last quoted, was
observed during a considerable period. Serjeant Cox says : —

(369) " The patient was my sister, a girl of 15, of hysterical tempera-
ment and somewhat deficient in intelligence. I was 6 years her senior. I
had then no knowledge of the phenomena of somnambulism, beyond the uses
made of it by the novelist and the dramatist. I had never even heard of
mesmerism. I was, therefore, a perfectly unprejudiced witness.

[The writer then describes cataleptic fits, from which his sister
suffered, and which used to pass off, leaving her in a semi-conscious, trance-
like state.]

" If, as she lay upon the sofa, her eyes firmly closed, I opened a book
having pictures in it, and sat behind her in a position where it was
physically impossible that she could see what I was doing, and I looked at
one of the pictures, she forthwith exhibited, in pantomimic action, the
posture of each person there depicted. It was perfectly manifest that she
had the image of the engraving impressed upon her mind, as distinctly as
if it had been conveyed to it by the sense of sight. Nor is it to be
explained by the suggestion that the engravings were familiar to her, and
that she guessed upon which of them I was looking ; for it was the same
with books and pictures purposely tried which she had never seen. But
whether that impression was obtained through my mind, in which the
image also was, or that her mind perceived the picture itself directly,
although out of the range of vision, is the problem to be solved. If the
servant who attended her, obedient to her signalled desire, went to her

348 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

bedroom on the floor above the room in which she was lying entranced, she
expressed the most obvious signs of annoyance if the servant above touched
the wrong thing, and of satisfaction when she touched the right one,
precisely as if the search had been made in the same room and she saw
what was going on. The experiment was purposely tried many times,
with various tests, so as to leave no doubt of the fact upon any member of
the family who witnessed it.

" It should be stated that when a part of the picture was covered, so
that I could see but a part, her perceptions were limited to the part seen
by me. I was, indeed, unable to trace any power of perception of any-
thing not seen by the person with whom her mind was at the time
associated. She perceived behind her so much of the picture as was seen
by me and impressed on my mind. She perceived the objects seen and
touched by her servant upstairs and so impressed upon her mind.

" These phenomena continued for nearly 2 years, so that there was
ample opportunity for observing them. Imposture was out of the question.
Delusion was impossible. The occurrence was in a private family, and
witnessed by none but themselves and the attendant physician, whose
sagacious explanation of it I have narrated." [The explanation referred
to was that it was a case of hysteria "and in hysteria people can do
anything."]

II.]

CHAPTER II.

IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES.

§ 1. THE present chapter will contain instances parallel to those
given in Chapters VI. and VII. of Vol. I., arranged as far as possible
in the same order. These accounts, and the dream-cases of the
succeeding chapter, belong (as pointed out in Vol. I., p. 234) to the
weakest evidential classes ; and I should have been glad to present
them in a more condensed shape. But I found on making the
attempt, that such force as they possess, and — what it is equally a
duty to bring out — their evidential defects, were apt to disappear
when their form was altered.

I will begin with cases where the transference of an idea seems
to have been of a tolerably definite and literal kind.

The first five cases (taken in connection with others)1 form a
group which strongly suggests that a fugitive faculty of percipience
may be developed by an abnormal condition of mind and body.

(370) From Mrs. Mainwaring, Knowles, Ardingly, Hayward's Heath.

"March 14th, 1885.

" During the Mutiny, I was staying with a friend, dreadfully ill — too
ill to be told what was going on. A baby was born, and a day or two
after, my friend's wife, sitting on my bed, received a letter. I said,
' You need not read it, I know every word,' and I told her. It was to say
she must not drive that afternoon to the Fort as usual, for some men were
going to be hanged on the road. I had not heard a word of the discovery
of the plot, or of the plot, or of what was to be ; but I said every word
in the letter, and I remember my friend's face of astonishment, as she
said, ' Why, how did you know it ? ' It didn't seem at all odd to me.

" E. L. MAINWARING."

Subsequently Mrs. Mainwaring wrote : —

"June 18th, 1885. „

" In compliance with your request, I wrote to my old friend, but I
have not had a line in reply. I do not know what can have become of
her, as it would have been very little trouble to say if she recollected the

1 See the list in p. 162, first note, as well as the cases of the preceding chapter.

350 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

facts I told you of. I do not like to write again, and I am sorry, there-
fore, I cannot add her testimony."

[In cases belonging to a weak class — i.e., a class where the experience
of the percipient is not of a sufficiently strongly-marked type to make it
violently improbable that it would be afterwards imagined or modified in
memory — absence of corroboration is of course a doubly important defect.
This remark applies to a good many of the examples that follow.]

In the following case, again, the percipient was in a state of
serious illness.

(371) From Mr. E. Chapman, (wood-carver) Windsor Hall, Brighton.

" 1884.

" My father, when a young man, entered the service of Sir Charles
Dymoke ; estate, Scrivelsby Hall, Lincolnshire. He rose rapidly to
become almost constant companion." Mr. Chapman then describes how
his father on one occasion saved the coachman of Sir C. Dymoke from
very serious danger and disgrace, for which the coachman said that " he
would thank him with his dying breath."

" Many years after this happened, my father was lying very ill ; so
much so he could not help himself in any way. My mother had just made
him as comfortable as possible, (he was perfectly helpless,) and she had
gone downstairs to attend to her household affairs, when she heard a
loud knocking, and going upstairs, found my father sitting bolt upright
in bed. On asking him how he came in- that position, he exclaimed,
' 0 mother,' (they always called each other mother and father), ' what is
the time 1 ' (being told), « What is it to-day ? ' (Thursday), ' And the day of
the month ? Now write it all down at once.'

" Being asked why he wished it to be written, he answered ' So-and-so,'
naming the aforesaid coachman, ' is dead.' ' How do you know that,
father 1 ' ' Don't ask me. You will have a letter in two or three days.'
On the third day from that time the letter came announcing the death of
the said coachman, somewhere in Norfolk — so that he and my father must
have been 50 miles apart at the time. My father, on sinking down to his
former helpless condition, exclaimed, ' O how cold it was.' We never could
get a further explanation from him, but for a long time after, when
anyone offered to shake hands with him in their shirt-sleeves, or had a
light coat on, he would shudder and sometimes say, ' How cold.'

" EDWARD CHAPMAN."

[The last words suggest some sort of sensory impression made on the
percipient ; but the evidence for this is insufficient.]

In the next example the percipient was not only ill, but closely
approaching death.

(372) From the Memoirs of the Rev. Joseph Buckminster, D.D., and
of his son, the Rev. J. S. Huckminster, by Eliza Buckminster Lee, Dr.
Buckminster's daughter, (Boston, U.S.A., 1851), pp. 464 and 476-7. Both
father and son were noted preachers. The "Mrs. Buckminster" mentioned
was the father's third wife.

" On Tuesday evening, June 9th, he (the son) expired

When his [Dr. Buckminster's] wife entered his [Dr. Buckminster's]

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 351

chamber the next morning he said to her, with perfect composure, ' My
son Joseph is dead.' Mrs. Buckminster, supposing that he had slept and
dreamed that his son was dead, although no news of his illness had
reached him, assured him that it was a dream. ' No,' he replied, { I have
not slept nor dreamed ; he is dead ! ' This incident is related as received
from the lips of her to whom the words were spoken, and there can be no
shadow of doubt of their truth."

The particulars of dates, &c., are as follows : —

Dr. Joseph Buckminster was living at Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
where he had been for many years pastor of a church. On the 1st or
2nd of June, 1812, he left Portsmouth intending to travel for his health.
He reached Peedsborough, a little village, on the 9th of June, and died there
the following morning, The Rev. J. S. Buckminster (the son) was living
at Boston in delicate health. . He was taken suddenly ill on June 3, and
died on June 9th, 24 hours before the death of his father. Dr. Buckminster
must have been aware of his son's delicate state of health, but no one seems
to have expected his death to occur when it did. There is no mention of
letters being sent to warn Dr. Buckminster, nor do the family seem to have
been aware of the son's illness until after the father's death. Indeed Dr.
Buckminster had intended to visit his son and daughter at Boston, on his
return from the expedition which was cut short by his own death.

The next example exhibits the faculty in a less fugitive form, and
in connection with more chronic disease.

(373) From the Zoist, Vol. V., p. 311.

Dr. Elliotson writes : — "The following particulars were sent to me by
a medical gentleman, who has already contributed with his name to the
Zoist, but begs his name not to be disclosed on the present occasion,
though I am at liberty to mention it to any person privately.

" JOHN ELLIOTSON."

" DEAR SIR, — I have some personal analogous experience. It is nearly
nine years since I took the immediate charge of a gentleman of deranged
intellect, with whom I reside in intimate association as friend. I have
often, particularly in the earlier years of my charge, been thoroughly
puzzled to account for his knowledge of circumstances, perhaps mere
trifles, with which we did not wish him to become acquainted. I did not
deem them worthy of note at the time, that is, I did not make any
memorandum of them, and would not now like to trust to my memory as
to the particulars, nor would they be clearly apprehended without entering
into tedious prosy details. Suffice it that long before I read the Zoist, I
had expressed to the able medical gentleman who regularly visits us an
opinion that ' our friend seemed to know things as if a spiritual intelli-
gence was at his elbow and whispered in his ear ' ; ' formerly they would-
have said he had a familiar spirit ' ; ' know, he certainly does, but how I
can't make out ' ; and such like remarks, showing my impression at the
time.

" Our patient's mental condition has greatly improved, and I do not
now often observe these curious perceptions, or they are not so singular or

352 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

strongly marked as to preclude the possibility of their being matters of
accidental coincidence.

" About three years since, for a few evenings, this perceptive power
was wonderfully acute ; he was in an argumentative and quarrelsome
humour at the time. We sat together by the fireside, while our tea was
infusing, seemingly both engaged in thought, when my friend exclaimed,
' I don't think that, sir ; I don't think that. 1 don't believe it. I say I

don't believe it.' I replied quietly, ' Don't believe what, Mr. ? I

have not spoken ; what do you allude to ? ' He immediately, without
noticing my remark that I had not spoken, referred to the precise subject
of which I had just been thinking, and began to contradict me respecting
it. Had this occurred but once, it might be said I was ' unconsciously
thinking aloud,' but several similar manifestations of perceptive power
took place about this time ; and, as I was on my guard, I can certainly
state, with as firm a conviction of the truth of my averment as any one
who confides in his senses and memory can feel, that I did not speak my
thoughts, but that there was a clairvoyant perception of them, or percep-
tion in some unaccountable manner.

" Another instance is well-marked, and caused us much interest and
wonder at the time. Four-and-a-half years since, it became necessary that

M , our house-steward and butler, should be discharged. As he was

an old family servant, and his dismissal might irritate our patient, it was
deemed advisable that we should pay a visit to the seaside for a month, and
his removal be effected during our absence. Without tedious explanation
I cannot convey the grounds of my conviction, but surely convinced am I
that our poor friend neither did nor could know anything of the contem-
plated change, until the day preceding that of our return home. He was

then informed by letter that M had, for certain reasons, been sent

away, and a very comfortable, respectable elderly person, Mrs. T ,

installed in his place. . . . Next morning we started for home, a
distance of 60 miles. Whilst the horses were being changed for the last

stage, ... I explained that Mrs. T would take care to make

us comfortable ; that she was a very respectable person ; that we would not
consider her a common servant, but call her our lady housekeeper, &c., &c.,
in the same strain, trying to impress that she was a very superior person
to the one she had succeeded. As I finished, we started. My friend threw
himself back in the carriage, and did not speak for 8 or 10 minutes,

and then said, 'I don't see that, Mr. ' (addressing me), ' I don't see

that ; I don't believe it. M kept a grocer's shop ' (Mrs. T kept

a grocer's shop before she came) ' before he came ; one grocer is as good as
another ; both shopkeepers ; no difference in respectability, I think.' This
was strictly true ; and the inquiries which I made to discover how our
friend knew it only tended to puzzle me, as the attendants, whose casual
remarks might have been overheard, declared that they did not know Mrs.

T was a grocer until I named it ; and other sources of information

there were not."1

1 While this chapter is passing through the press, I have received, from Mr. W. H.
Dayman, of Redbridge, Southampton, an account of Mrs. Occomore, abed-ridden old woman
in his village, blind and a little deaf, and living a completely isolated life, who seems some-
times to have an abnormal intuition of what is passing in other minds. From among other
less distinct instances, I select the two following. I should premise that Mrs. Occomore,
her daughter, Mrs. Futcher, and a grand-daughter, are the only occupants of the house.

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 353

If the following case is accurately reported, the percipient must
again have been in a very abnormal condition ; as people do not
usually commit suicide because their fathers die. It is probable that,
though both deaths occurred, the exactitude of the coincidence may
have been exaggerated ; and the scene on ship-board has very likely
become, in recollection and transmission, more picturesque and
dramatic than it really was.

(374) From Mr. Nicholas Heald, Bowdon-by-Altrincham, Cheshire.

"July 7th, 1884.

" The late John Gisborne [the narrator's brother-in-law], who was an
officer in the naval service of the old East India Company, often during
his life told the following incident : —

" One Saturday evening, when it was the sailors' custom, among other
toasts, always to give ' Sweethearts and Wives,' followed by others, and
when the ship was thousands of miles distant from England, one of his
brother officers who was silent, gloomy, and depressed, was urged to give
his toast, but made no reply. At length, after constant pressure, he stood
up and said, looking sternly around on his merry companions, ' Well, fill
your glasses,' and followed this up by saying, ' I give you the memory of
my dead father.' Shocked at this, his brother officers hesitated, when he
again sternly repeated, ' I give you the memory of my dead father.' He
then left the table, went upon deck and was seen no more, having, it is
supposed, thrown himself overboard.

"On the ship's arrival in the Thames, Gisborne, after reporting himself
at the India House, went to the house of the young man's father, some
short distance in the suburbs, to communicate to the family his death.
He asked to see the father, and on the servant saying he was dead, found,
in answer to his inquiries, that he died the very same day that his son
drowned himself. " NICHOLAS HEALD."

Mr. Gisborne's daughter (Loventor House, Berry Pomeroy, Totnes)
writes : —

" I recollect very well, and have often repeated it to others, what dear
papa related, which was that at the mess table the officer suddenly drank
to his just deceased father's memory, and immediately left and threw him-
self overboard, and on arrival in England, papa found the date and hour
exactly corresponded with the father's death. I don't know the ship or
officer's name."

(1) " On the 22nd March, Mrs. F., who had been some time undecided as to giving
notice to leave the house they all live in, which she rents, finally decided to do so, ana
sent Mrs. T. [her daughter] to Winchester to give notice to the proper authorities. On
that day Mrs. O., who of course knew nothing about it, began declaring that they
were all going to leave the house and that she must be packing up her things. So the
whole of the day she was busy with her hands fumbling about the bed-clothes, fancying*
she was packing things. For two days she kept on like this.

(2) " On March 2Gth, Mrs. F. went out into her yard to clean up some straw which
was littered about there. She was called off her work to attend to her mother (Mrs. O.).
Upon getting into her room, Mrs. O. at once began telling her to sweep up the straw
which she declared was strewn all over the room, and no assurances to the contrary would
convince her that there was no straw there, till finally, to satisfy her, Mrs. F. got the
broom and pretended to sweep it up.

VOL. II. 2 A

354 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Mr. Gisborne's widow says that she thinks the young officer's name was
Hunter.

[Such an incident as the suicide would probably be recorded in the log,
and a laborious search has therefore been made at the India Office, in order
to ascertain the name of the ship ; but without success.]

(375) From Miss Butler, Priestown, Co. Meath.

December 18th, 1885.

Miss Butler begins by describing her unusually strong friendship with
a Madame H., head of a finishing establishment for young ladies at F., in
Germany, with whom she lived for some time. Mrs. H. having gone to
Paris for a few weeks, to engage a French governess, Miss Butler spent
this period at her own home, and the greater part of it in bed, as she was
still suffering from the effects of an illness. Here she had a vivid sense
of accompanying Madame H. on her search through the different convents
of Paris. She finally insisted on returning to F., being sure that Madame
H. would be back before the appointed time, which proved to be the case.

" I told her how I had followed all her movements ; I described the
different convents ; described the room in the Sacre* Coeur, I think it was, in
which she saw the young woman she actually engaged ; described the Mother
Superior; told her the young lady's name, Mdlle. F., which of course
I had never heard, and told her the terms on which she had engaged
her. She was astonished. There was a kind of superior housekeeper, a
Frau M., who was much in Madame's confidence ; she was present while I
told my tale and Madame said it was all true. I told her I remembered
many other things, the particulars of which have escaped my memory, as
they had no interest for me save as they concerned my Madame. Amongst
others, I described her meeting with a French gentleman who used to visit
her at F., and mentioned the subject of conversation. Mademoiselle came
over with her ; she made me describe to her the room at the convent, the
conversation, &c., and the poor girl said she was frightened of me, she was
sure I was not all right, and I don't think she ever got over the feeling of
constraint, shall I call it, to the end of our connection.

"ISABELLA BUTLER."

In answer to inquiries, Miss Butler writes : —

" It must have been in the year 1849 or 1850. I have never had any
further experience — at least nothing of the same kind that I could detail
in as circumstantial a manner." She has long lost sight of Madame H. ;
and Mdlle. F. and Frau M. are dead.

In the next few cases the percipient was apparently in a
perfectly normal state.

(376) The following incident is recorded in All the Year Round for May
6, 1859, by a physician who does not give his name, but who says that it was
described to him as a personal experience by Prof. Wilson, of Edinburgh.
The physician himself writes sensibly, and much of his paper is devoted to
explaining the purely subjective nature of many of the hallucinations
which have been marvelled at as " apparitions."

Prof. Wilson (as reported) begins by describing a picnic party, to
which he went with some friends in Ireland : — ;

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 355

"The thick of the dinner being over, we strolled out, or lolled, in that
pleasant prolongation of a repast, which is the best part of a thing of that
sort ; but as we knew that, according to the programme, our time was
limited, on account of some other spots which we had yet to visit, I was
deputed to see, by a reference to my watch, that we did not overstay the
hour. Accordingly, I had placed my watch — a fine old silver warming-
pan, the paternal gift — on a low fragment of ruin that was just opposite to
me, and in the intervals of conversation I looked at it, though indeed not
quite so often as at the face of Mary M. Suddenly — I perfectly remem-
ber the hands were pointing to twenty minutes past two in the sunshine —
the watch arrested my gaze, while a remarkable feeling passed over me.
I said to myself, but to this hour I know not why, ' At this exact time my
brother R. is dying in India.' The sensation came and went with the
rapidity of those unaccountable impressions

' Which make the present, while the flash doth last,
Seem but the semblance of an unknown past. '

Yet, so much was I struck with the incident, that taking out my pocket-
book, saying nothing, however, to anybody as to why I did so, I noted
down the day and hour of this strange visitation of thought. I did not
exactly place confidence in the prevision, yet I could not shake off an
unpleasant feeling about it. At length the incident became merged in the
frequent repetition to myself that it was ' all fudge,' and I might call it
forgotten (there was plenty of time for this, for it was not in the days of
steam), when a letter from India brought our family the startling intelli-
gence that my brother had actually died there on the very day when I had
made the entry in my pocket-book, and at an hour which, by allowance
for latitude [no doubt a slip of the writer's own], corresponded exactly with
that marked by my watch when I had my eyes on it. Our correspondent
also informed us that my brother had, in his last moments, mentioned me."1

1 The following narrative is very similar, and in detail also closely resembles case 72. I
do not give it an evidential number, as it is not certain that the witness was cognisant of
the percipient's impression before the news of the death arrived. Mrs. Harper, of
Gotham, Bristol, narrates : — "1884.

" My father-in-law, Mr. A. Harper, told me that at one time.of his life he was in the
Spanish wool trade, and that it necessitated one of the partners residing in Spain, and in
consequence his cousin, Mr. James B. , went to Spain. Before leaving Bristol he became
engaged to a Miss B. Some time after his departure, Miss B. was at a large party, seated
at the piano, when she suddenly withdrew her hands, sobbing hysterically, saying,
' James B. is dead ; James B. is dead. ' She could not explain how she knew it, but had
a most convincing consciousness that it was so, and he really had died in Spain at the
time of Miss B.'s distress. "S. J. HARPER."

Mrs. Hellier, of Headingly College, Leeds, writes on April 7, 1885 :—

"My sister-in-law, Mrs. Harper, of Bristol, has forwarded to me your letter of the
4th, asking for further information regarding an incident related to her by my late father,
Mr. A. Harper. I am sorry that I cannot inform you on the point you name, viz., my
father being present when it occurred. The probability is that he was not, but that he
heard it next day from those who were. He was then in the employ of his uncle, Mr. B.
(a Spanish wool merchant), and consequently in daily intercourse with him and his other
sons, all of whom are dead. •

" I well remember hearing my father and mother talk of the incident in question, but
being a mere child at the tune (7 or 8 years of age) did not take much interest in the
conversation. "JANE E. HELLIER."

I will add a parallel case in which the incidents are so simple that even a third-hand
account is of some evidential force.

Mrs. Michael Smith, of 27, Perham Road, S. W., narrates :— « June, 1884.

" My grandfather, Mr. John Syme, of Ryedale, Dumfriesshire, the friend and patron
VOL. II. 2 A 2

356 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

(377) From Mrs. Clerke, Clifton Lodge, Farquhar Road, Upper Nor-
wood, S.E., the narrator of case 242. « November 18th, 1885.

"My two boys returned to school on the 18th September. They
intended to try the route vid Swindon and Andover, on account of the
trains being more convenient, instead of going by Paddington.

" They left home about 3 o'clock, and I heard no more about them
until the Monday following, but I was very uneasy all the evening, and
about 9.30 I remarked to my daughter, 'I am perfectly convinced that
those boys have never got to Marlborough ; I am quite sure they are
walking about the roads this minute.' She said, ' What nonsense ! of
course they are all right. Gus ' (the youngest), ' is so sensible, he never
would make a mistake.' I said, ' I don't know, but I feel quite sure they
have missed one train after another, and have never got there.' On the
Monday following I heard from them. They had missed the train at
Waterloo, had then gone to Paddington, missed the special there, and had
gone by a later, which, by a curious combination of circumstances, had
landed them at Woodborough. They got out, mistaking it in the dark for
Marlborough, and only found out their mistake too late, and had walked
11 miles on a road unknown to them, and got to their school at 1 o'clock
in the morning. They managed to scale the walls, and found a class-room
open, where they got what sleep they could — very little. « ]yj CLERKE "

Miss Clerke corroborates as follows : — "November 30th 1885

" I remember distinctly, when my brothers returned to school, that my
mother remarked several times to me that she felt quite sure that they
were walking about the roads somewhere. We found out afterwards that
it was just as my mother said, and, at the time she spoke, they actually
were walking to Marlborough. " H F B CLERKE "

[In describing the incident to me, Mrs. Clerke, who is the reverse
of a nervous or fanciful person, especially dwelt on her impression that
her sons were wandering on roads. This particular idea seems a far less
likely one to have been purely subjectively caused, through maternal
apprehension, than that of some calamity, such as a railway accident.
It was also a very unlikely thing to occur in reality. At the same time,
it may be conceived that the mention of the projected novel route had led
to some passing remark — such as, " Don't blunder about your trains, or
you'll have to walk," and that the odd impression had its origin in this
forgotten suggestion.]

(378) Mr. J. W. Stillman, the well-known American writer, gives the

of Burns, was a remarkable man. Two of his sons were abroad, one in the army in India,
one commanding a ship of his own in the merchant navy, at the West Indies. One day
my grandfather entered the room where my aunt, his only daughter, was sitting, and said
to her, ' Harriet, your brother John is dead.' Afterwards it was proved that he had died
on that day in India. My aunt noted the day, and six months later came the news of his
death. Another time he came to his daughter, and, in exactly the same way, stood in the
doorway, delivered his speech, and went away — 'Harriet, Richard is dead,'— and subse-
sequently word came that he had died on that day.

"This was told to me by an uncle, since dead. I have no means of corroborating
this, though I know it to be literally true, as my grandfather died more than 50 years ago,
and was then past 70. I never saw him. He was with Burns, crossing a moor in a
thunderstorm, when Burns was inspired by ' Scots wha hae. ' "

The Harriet of the narrative (Mrs. Smith's aunt) is also dead. Mrs. Smith never
heard how the warning was given ; she believes that her grandfather never told anyone.

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 357

following account of his experiences in connection with two friends. Of
the first he says : —

" She had never been subject to visions or hallucinations, had no
tendency to hysteria, and was gifted with great common-sense in practical
matters. She was the wife of a physician, and mother of several
children. But she had a psychological power which is in my experience
unique, and between herself and any very intimate friend there was a
mental sympathy almost amounting on her part to clairvoyance. Between
her and myself there was especially a sympathy so distinct that I could
generally, by excluding physical objects of attention, perceive her mental,
sometimes physical, condition, and she on her part had generally a pre-
sentiment of my visits.

" She passed a great deal of her time at the house of a married
daughter in Brooklyn, my residence being in New York. On one occasion,
while staying at her daughter's, she was visited by what the Germans call
the Doppel-ganger of myself. Entering the room where she sat sewing
at a window, looking out on the street, at an hour in the afternoon when
she had no reason to expect a visit, she remarked at once, ' I knew you
were coming for I saw you pass the window 10 minutes ago. You were
looking just as you now look, and dressed in precisely the same manner.
I waited for you to ring the bell, and when after some time no ring came,
I said to myself " Stillman is coming." ' I had not previously passed the
house, but came straight from the ferry, and when I came in sight, came
from the same direction as the Doppel-ganger, between which and myself,
she said, there was no visible difference. [This, however, may have been
a case of mistaken identity.]

" If she ever desired to see me urgently, I felt the impression of her
mind so strongly that I invariably, when not urgently occupied, went to
her at once. Some years after I knew her, she went to California, in the
hope of throwing off the pulmonary disease of which she died, and during
her absence we corresponded regularly. One day, during the voyage, I
had a sudden and vivid impression that she was dying, and noted it in
my diary. The impression passed away, however, and was not renewed.
On getting the letter which announced her safe arrival I found recorded
that, on the day I had noted in my diary, she had been completely over-
come by the intense heat, and had it not been for the steamer's fortunate
arrival the same day at Acapulco, where ice and lemon were instantly
procured from the shore, in her own opinion and that of the surgeon she
would probably have died that day.

•" One day, while working quietly in my studio at New York, not know-
ing where she was, nor having had any recent communication from her, I
had suddenly a vivid perception that she wanted the help of Sara [her
daughter]. I crossed the ferry at once to Brooklyn, took a carriage and
drove to her daughter's house, saying to her that her mother wanted her, saw
her in the carriage, and on her way, and then went back to my studio.
The next day I learned that [Mrs. M. had been suddenly forced to partici*
pate in a most distressing and agitating] scene, during which her daughter
arrived, finding her mother completely prostrated and fainting, and carried
her off to her own house.

" One of the most intimate mutual friends of Mrs. M. and myself was a
Mrs. B., wife of a well-known American sculptor. Between Mrs. B. and

358 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

myself there was a mental sympathy, even stronger than that with
Mrs. M.j though different in kind. Like Mrs. M., she was much my
senior, and like her, too, was a victim to an over-developed nervous
system, though rarely ill — of uncommon intellectual gifts, and the friend
of many of the best minds of that day in America. But, like Socrates,
she heard a voice which warned, counselled, and answered her at all
times, and whose admonitions neither she nor her husband ever hesi-
tated to obey. She had Zschokke's gift * of seeing events in the past life
of people with whom she was en rapport, and I remember W. C. Bryant
saying one day that she had told him of events of the gravest importance
in his life, known to no one then living but himself. In her normal con-
dition she read the thoughts of any one with whom she was intimate, and
answered mental questions, or described mental conditions with no hesita-
tion, and the greatest fulness and clearness. Her gifts were carefully
limited in their manifestation, or as subjects of conversation, to her circle
of intimate friends, with occasional admission of one of their friends with
a genuine interest in this class of mental phenomena ; nor should I now
make them the subject of any relation, but that she is dead. There are
still many of her circle living who can attest the truth of what I say ; but
she would never submit to any examination by sceptical inquirers, and
never made any attempt to induce belief in her powers, of which, no more,
did she attempt explanation. Her ' occult ' powers varied greatly, and
sometimes seemed entirely suspended, as well as affected by the influence
of people around her. Between her and myself there was always a
complete confidence, and I found it quite impossible to think in her
presence and keep my thoughts from her ; and her feeling for me was that
of an elder sister, so that I willingly submitted my mind to her scrutiny ;
nor did I ever find her perceptions unfounded, although, in some cases, it
was several years before I found out the basis of her impressions.

"W. J. STILLMAN."

(379) From a lady who desires that names may not be mentioned,
owing to the painful nature of one of the facts recorded.

"Sept. 1st, 1886.

" In the spring of this year, while my mother was suffering from a
serious illness, a gentleman in the neighbourhood committed suicide by
shooting himself in the mouth, between 4 and 5 in the morning, dying
about three-quarters of an hour afterwards. Early in the morning of the
occurrence, [while the narrator was nursing her,] she mentioned him
several times, saying he ' kept flitting about her room and did so bother
her, she wished he would go.' After this she addressed the supposed
intruder, saying, ' Go ! I wish you would go. Why do you come here ? I
don't want you.' He was a man with whom she was on terms of civility,
but had never cordially liked, as she considered he had done her an
injury. This led her to add, ' I forgive you, I hope God will. Go ! '
[This incident alone could have no weight, as in her illness Mrs. —
had seemed to see other absent persons in her room.] She did not allude
to him again, and was not quite so restless. The doctor called at half-
past 10 ; and when I went back to her room after he had gone, I found her
in a very excited condition. She said, ' Dr. S. has made me feel so

1 For Zschokke's description of his gift, see Eine Selbstschau, (Aarau, 1843) pp. 227-9.

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 359

strange — I never had such peculiar sensations before ; I wish he had never
come.1 My head is so bad, I don't know how it is, perhaps I shall be able
to explain it all to you when I am well.'

" She was very restless all the morning. At 1 o'clock my sister came
to relieve me, and tried to fan her to sleep. . Her efforts were unavailing,
and at last my mother seized her hands, saying, ' It is of no use, you cannot
send me to sleep while my head is so queer.' ' How queer ? ' 'I don't
know, but ever since Dr. S. came and sat by me, I have felt so strange.
When he took my hand, there was a shot, a pistol went off, and then all
was confusion.2 But I do not see the blood ; was there any blood ? ' After
which she added, ' I dare say I shall be able to tell you more about it when
my head is better ; I cannot explain how I feel now, I have never been
like this before — it is my brain.' Later on in the afternoon, she mentioned
a friend, saying, ' Poor T. has to be shot in the back so often before I can
be well. I am very sorry ; it is a shame to shoot a nice fellow like him,
but they say " Shoot him, shoot him." ' And again, complaining of her
head, she said, ' What is all this murdering 1 I have never been amongst
shooting and murdering, have I ? There is a pistol — it went off first when
Dr. S came, and it has been going on through my head ever since, and the
bed is covered with them.' She continued in this excited state all the
afternoon, and could not be persuaded to sleep. My sister went to the
doctor, and he sent something which soothed her a little ; but she did not
seem to be really herself again until the next morning.

" We heard from the doctor that he had been to the house where the
suicide had been committed, before calling to see my mother, and that he
had held the pistol in the same hand with which he touched her. She was
not told of the gentleman's death until 3 weeks afterwards ; but she fre-
quently alluded to Mr. [the deceased] and his family — which appeared

strange, as they were persons with whom she held very little intercourse.
She once remarked that they had quite haunted her ever since that day
she was so ill and heard the pistols. Her friend T., whom she had
imagined to be shot, had heard early of the suicide, and been engaged in
communicating the fact to relatives of the deceased gentleman."

Dr. S. confirmed these facts to me, as far as he was concerned. Mrs.

had never had any connection with pistols or shooting. The suicide

was known of in the house before the doctor's visit ; but it was clear to
me from Miss — — 's viva voce description that no remarks on the subject
could have penetrated to Mrs. — — 's ears ; and, moreover, she was quite
enough herself to understand the news, and comment on it, had it come to
her .knowledge in a normal way.

(380) From the Rev. Mr. Bryce, The Manse, Moffat. To my great
disappointment, I am obliged to give a second-hand version of this case.

1 His visits, as I learnt both from himself and from the narrator, had always, except
on this occasion, been grateful and soothing to the patient ; and he had regarded her as
convalescent. ,

2 An account of this occurrence, which was sent without authority to a London news-
paper, affords a good instance of the way in which a story may get rounded off and
beautified in transmission. After exclaiming that a gun had gone off, the lady is made to
look wildly round, and to cry " Oh, I see Mr. B. floating about the room," — the vision of
the deceased being thus brought into connection with the sound of the shot, through the
juxtaposition of events which were separated by several hours ; and the fact of the other
visual hallucinations being of course omitted.

360 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

On Oct. 1, 1886, Mr. Bryce gave me vivd voce a detailed account, which
I omitted to commit at once to paper, relying on his promise to write it
out and send it to me immediately. Not having received it (Oct. 12),
I am reduced to giving my present recollections, the accuracy of which,
however, so far as they go, I think I can guarantee.

Some years ago, when Mr. Bryce was a student at Edinburgh Univer-
sity, he was called away for a time to attend an elder brother who
was much attached to him, and who was seriously ill. His brother's
health seemed to be improving ; and there being no immediate anxiety,
Mr. Bryce left him (I think at Lockerbie) in order to take part in an
evening debate at Edinburgh. He was delivering the speech which he
had prepared, and was completely intent on the matter in hand, when he
was suddenly arrested by what, from his description, I should judge to
have been an extremely vivid " mind's eye " vision, bordering on halluci-
nation, and representing his brother. The room and everything in it
seemed blotted out, and the single image of his brother seemed to absorb
his whole consciousness. He says that he has never had such an
experience, or anything in the least resembling it, on any other occasion.
I do not recollect how far his peculiar condition excited the attention of
his companions ; but he himself felt at once convinced that his brother
had died, noted the time, and, when he returned to his lodgings, mentioned
his conviction to the housekeeper, Mrs. Fenton. (He promised to trace
out Mrs. Fenton, who, he is certain, would corroborate him on this point.)
His brother died, as he learnt next day, at the exact time — he believes to
the very minute — of his own experience.

[Mr. Bryce is sure that he was not appreciably anxious about his
brother's condition, and he was certainly not thinking of him at the
moment. Still, as he had just left him, after being constantly with him
for some time, and with a mind influenced perhaps more than he himself
knew by his recent cares and duties, it would be difficult to argue
that his experience was telepathic, rather than purely subjective, but for
the alleged exactitude of the coincidence. And we may fairly suppose,
I think, that the coincidence was at any rate a very close one ; since Mr.
Bryce was not led to consider the time of his experience by learning the
fact of the death, but noted the time of his experience under a con-
viction that the death had at that moment taken place, and was specially
interested in finding out, next day, whether his conviction had been
justified.] ,

(381) From Miss Caulfield, 1, Hyde Park Mansions, N.W.

"December 8th, 1883.

" Many years ago, when staying with my father at Beckford House,
Bath, I awoke one morning painfully impressed by the idea that some-
thing was amiss at my sister's (in Ireland) ; could not guess what it was
— whether illness, danger, or accident. So being exceedingly uneasy, and
convinced that something had happened, I wrote at once to inquire whether
all were well. A letter from her crossed mine, telling me that she had
had a great alarm, and had been in danger on that night ; for that a beam
of wood — connected with the nursery fireplace and the floor — had become
ignited, and unknown to anyone had been smouldering for some hours ;
and had it proceeded any further unseen, they might not have been able to
save the house, nor perhaps even themselves. The house being in the

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 361

country, at a considerable distance from any other dwelling, a fire, at night
more especially, would have proved calamitous in the extreme.

" SOPHIA F. A. CAULPIELD."

After writing to her sister on the subject, Miss Caulfield adds : —
" My sister remembers the incident, but has only a faint recollection of
my letter having crossed hers."

[Asked if this was a unique experience, or whether she had had similar
impressions which had not corresponded with reality, Miss C. replied that
she had had only one similar experience, and that there her impression was
correct. (This other experience was a presentiment, and has no relation
to the above.) And though impressions of the sort which are not stamped
by a coincidence may easily fade from the memory, it may be assumed
that a person who remembers none has not experienced many so strong as
to have prompted her to write a letter.]

The following are instances where the impression seems to have
been of a decidedly pictorial kind, as in the scene-cases at the close
of Chap. VI. in the preceding volume. The account is unfortunately
anonymous, but there seems to be no reason to doubt its bona fides.
The mental condition of the percipient recalls case 373.

(382 and 383) From the Zoist, Vol. V., p. 30, sent by Mr. Clark,
Surgeon, of York Place, Kingsland Road, E., who had received it from
a lady of his acquaintance. " July llth 1846

"In the years 1841-2, my dear respected father was frequently
attacked with mental derangement, originating greatly, I believe, from
the knowledge of the unfortunate circumstances in which I, his beloved
daughter, was placed, owing to the sudden death of my husband.

" The various scenes of mental delusion I was called to witness are
not uncommon to gentlemen of your profession ; I therefore pass them
over simply to relate his strange knowledge of events.

" My attention was first excited by the following incident. So soon
as the meat for dinner was brought from the butcher's, of which he could
have no possible knowledge, being confined to his bed, and out of reach of
either seeing or hearing, he exclaimed (pointing to the floor underneath,
which was the room it was in), ' What a nice rump-steak ; I will have
some.' Struck with his manner, and also knowing that it was not our in-
tended dinner, I replied, ' No, father, there is no rump-steak ; we are going
to have mutton-chops ' ; he went into a great passion, declared that there
was rump-steak, that he could see it, and described the dish. I went
downstairs, and to my utter astonishment beheld it as he related.

" In the morning, without making known my intention, I took a
basket and went into the garden, to cut some cabbages and gather straw-
berries. The garden being at the side of the house, where there was no
window to look into it, it was impossible for him to see me by ordinary
vision. However, he turned to my sister, saying, 'That basket into which
Betsey is putting the cabbages and strawberries had better be moved
out of the sun, or the fruit will be spoiled ; tell her she is not gathering
strawberries from the best bed, she had better go to the other.' When I
was told of it, I was completely puzzled. During the time of my visit,
wherever I went, whatever I did or thought of, was open to his view.

362 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" My sister afterwards informed me that his medical attendant lent
her some books for her perusal. One morning my father said to her,
' The doctor sends his respects, and will be obliged for the books.' Sup-
posing some message had been sent, my sister replied, ' Very well.' In
the course of a short time after, the doctor's boy arrived with his master's
respects and request for the books. On inquiry, she found no previous
message had been sent, nor inquiry made for them. We have both come to
the conclusion that he' must mentally have travelled to the doctor's and
heard the message ; I should think the distance three-quarters of a mile.

" Another time he said to my sister, ' There is a handsome young man
and an old woman, coining by the coach this afternoon to see me.' Sure
enough, to her surprise, when the coach arrived, it brought my brother
and a nurse for my father. No one had any knowledge of my brother's
coming, or of his bringing a nurse with him. The distance from whence
they came was 1 1 miles. I wish to call your attention to the circum-
stance that here he did not recognise the parties, though both were well-
known to him ; calling my brother a young man and the nurse an old
woman, instead of mentioning their names.

" When in his senses, he knew nothing of what had transpired, and
had no recollection of my coming to see him. He wasted away to a skeleton
and died, midsummer, 1842, in the 64th year of his age. He never, until
the time stated, had any mental derangement, though he certainly was
for years very nervous. At the time, I knew nothing of phrenology, so
cannot give his development. I know Jie was a talented and very
active man, a kind and affectionate father.

"My second case, that of my eldest sister, though in priority of time
before my father, is yet not so interesting. She was in a bad state of
health some years — I suppose what might be called nervous. The circum-
stances I am about to relate occurred during a severe illness, in which
mental derangement took place. At one time she would take no food,
at another eat most voraciously. One day we had ribs of beef for dinner.
How it came to her knowledge, I could never ascertain, but so it did,
and she insisted on having some for her dinner. I gave her some ; she
wanted more. Fearing to make her worse I would not give it her ; she
declared she should have it, but soon after went to sleep. I went quietly
downstairs, took the meat out of the kitchen, carried it down through the
beer-cellar into the wine-cellar, covered it over with a tub, put a weight on
it, went up and found her just as I left her. During the night,
through fatigue, I fell asleep, and was awakend by her calling to me.
What was my astonishment when I beheld her sitting in bed with a
slice of this beef cut the whole length of the ribs, devouring it like a
savage. I asked her how she obtained it, and she positively declared that
she fetched it herself while I slept ; that while lying in bed she saw me
go down, take the meat, and she described every particular. I believe
she never left her bed when I hid it ; and had she, there were three doors
which I closed after me, and I must have seen her. When she recovered
she knew nothing about it, but on a relapse told me all the circumstances
again, laughing heartily at the trick she had played on me."

Here, again, it will be seen, the clairvoyance recorded does not
pass beyond the telepathic type where what is perceived is within

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 363

the view or knowledge of persons connected with the percipient.1
(Vol. I, pp. 266, 378-9.)

§ 2. The next two examples are parallel to the arrival cases in
Chap. VI. (Vol. L, pp. 252-4).

(384) From Mrs. Gibbes, Alverton House, Croydon Road, S.E.

" September, 1884.

" My son was in Mexico and I had no reason to expect his return. He
had been absent for four years.

"In December, 1883, an impression came upon me that he would be
soon home, and I could not get rid of it. My daughters laughed at me,
but my feeling of it grew so strong that I determined to prepare a room
for him. I began quietly one evening, and got up early next morning to
clean out a study for him myself, not letting the others know that I was
doing it. Whilst I was on the step, dusting the birdcases, a telegram
arrived to say he would be home in the evening.

" He had had an attack of yellow fever, and had come by sea to New
York. His uncle persuaded him not to telegraph from there, but to come
as a surprise.

" I have had impressions of misfortunes, and have noted down the
dates, but nothing has happened. " KATE GIBBES."

Mr. Gibbes writes : —

" I find the statements correct as far as my memory is concerned.

" W. R. GIBBES (M.R.C.S.E., Ac.)"

In conversation, Mrs. Gibbes stated that her son's letters had con-
tained no hint of his return, which would not have occurred but for his
attack of yellow fever. Her daughters bore witness to her state of excited
expectation.

[Here the impression at any rate produced a definite act of a very
unlikely kind. The final sentence in Mrs. Gibbes's account of course
detracts somewhat from the force of the coincidence ; but, though I am
bound to print that sentence, she herself (in August, 1886) doubts its
correctness, and cannot recall to what it referred.]

1 The same remark applies to an interesting case in the Correspondence de Mme. la
Duchesse d' Orleans (Paris, 1857), Vol, i., pp. 112-3, to which our attention was called by
M. Guillaume Guizot. « Versailles, 2 mars, 1709.

"II y a dix ans qu'un gentilhomme francais, qui a e"te" page du marshal d'Huinieres.
et qui a ^pouse^ une de mes dames d'atour, amena avec lui un sauvage [du Canada]
en France. Un jour qu'pn e'tait a table, le sauvage se mit a pleurer et a faire des
grimaces. Longueil (ainsi s'appelait le gentilhomme) lui demanda ce qu'il avait, et s'il
souffrait. Le sauvage ne fit que pleurer plus amerement. Longueil insistant vivement,
le sauvage lui dit : ' Ne me force pas a le dire, car c'est toi que cela concerne, et non pas
moi.' Press^ plus que jamais, il finit par dire : ' J'ai vu par la fenetre que ton frere ^tait
assassin^ en tel endroit du Canada' par telle personne qu il lui nomma. Longueil se mit
a rire, et lui dit : ' Tu es devenu fou. ' Le sauvage repondit : ' Je ne suis point du tout
fou; mets par ^crit ce que je t'annonce, et tu verras si je me trompe.' Longueil ecrivit,
et six mois apres, quand les navires du Canada arriverent, il apprit que la mort de son
frere e^ait arrived au moment exact et a 1'endroit oh le sauvage 1'avait vu en 1'air par la
f enetre. C'est une histoire tres yraie. "

We cannot be sure that this incident was told to the Duchess d'Orleans by any onfe
who was cognisant of the experience before the news which confirmed it arrived. But
supposing the report to be substantially correct, it is to be presumed that the percipient
was acquainted with the man whose death he seemed to behold ; though it is still probable
that the presence with him at the time of that man's brother was to some extent a
condition of the percipience, as in cases 242 and 355 above. I have drawn attention
(Vol. I., pp. 156-7) to the suspicious exactitude of coincidence which characterises
second and third-hand narratives of this type.

364 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

The next narrative, though worth quoting, can hardly receive an
evidential number ; for its incidents could only be attributed to
thought-transference by assuming — what is not proved — that the
visits were already intended, at the time that the impressions were
felt; and, moreover, in the absence of an accurate written record,
every allowance mast be made for the liability in such matters to
note successes and not failures.

From Mr. Robert Gibson, Mulgrave Cottage, Limerick.

"January 18th, 1884.

" Scores of times, when I would be going down to my office, after
breakfast, my wife [who was in delicate health, and is since deceased]
would say to ine, ' Miss So-and-so or Mrs. So-and-so will be here to-day ;
don't let them come up to the house ; say I am not able to see them ' ; or
' So-and-so will be here to-day, let them come in.'

" I used to laugh, and say, ' Humbug, how do you know they are
coming ! ' and she would reply, ' I feel that they are, and be sure you leave
word with some of the men if you are going out.'

" With only one exception was she ever wrong, to my memory ; that
was one Friday. She said, ' The Miss Mercers are coming to-day.' I
happened to be in my office the whole day ; and they did not come ; so
at length I laughed, and said, ' Well, my love, you were wrong, the Miss
Mercers did not come.' She asked rne,*'Are you sure?' 'Quite,' I
replied, ' I never left the place all day.' ' Well,' she said, ' I am positive
they were coming.' Of course I laughed at her, and told her it was stupid
to be positive about what was not so.

" You may guess my surprise if you can, when on the next Sunday,
coming out of church, Miss Mercer came up to me, and said, ' Please tell
Mrs. Gibson that Nan ' (her sister) ' and I were coming to see her on
Friday, when Nan remembered a book she had promised to take Mrs.
Gibson and ran back for it, leaving me walking up and down the street.
I waited fully 20 minutes, and then went in and found Miss Nan sitting
by the fire, cloakless and hatless, with a book in her hand. She could not
find the book she was looking for, and after looking for it for ever so long,
thought I had gone on, and that there would be no chance of overtaking
me, so took off her hat and cloak, and sat down to read.' "

To these I may add two more cases in which the chief feature
is a sense of someone's proximity, but in which the fact of that
proximity was already known to a third person, who may have been
the agent.

(385) From a lady, Mrs. W., who prefers that her name should not be
published. « 1884

"In the autumn of 1860, I was staying in London with my husband
[since deceased] for a short time, and one Saturday evening was alone in
my bedroom dressing to go to the opera, when suddenly something seemed
to say to me, ' Shut and lock your door, there is a madman in the house.'
So strong was this impression that I searched all over the room and

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 365

locked the door. I dressed hurriedly, rushed downstairs, and told my
husband, who was very much amused, and laughed at me ! The next even-
ing (Sunday) we sent the servant on a little errand for us ; she was about
an hour away. When she came in, she said she was very sorry she had
been so long, but she had to wait for the mistress's return, who had been
taking her husband back to the lunatic asylum, for when he was not
violent she had him home from Saturday until Sunday night.

" My husband was very much startled, and we left the next day."

Mr. Podmore says : —

" In conversation, Mrs. W. explained that she had imagined her land-
lady to be a widow, and had not had the least suspicion of the true state
of the case. She told me that she has on one or two other occasions had
strong impressions of this kind, but never so marked as in this instance.
She had no recollection of any impression of the kind which had not 'come
true.' "

(386) From Mr. James Cowley, who wrote from 32, Langton Street,
Cathay, Bristol. "January 8th, 1884.

" Some two years ago, in the Hereford Cathedral, at an evening
service, I became oppressed with the feeling that a certain person (I must
withhold the name), whose contact would have been most painful to me,
must necessarily have been near me. I had not seen that person for 5
years. More than once I turned my head to take a look round. But there
was no sign of him. Next morning I learned that he had been in Here-
ford on the day before (Saturday), and that a person sitting next to me, in
the cathedral, on my left-hand, had been for some hours in his company."

Asked if he mentioned the incident at the time, and if he could refer
me to the person who was sitting near him, Mr. Cowley replies that :

" The Hereford Cathedral affair did not (from the nature of the cir-
cumstances rendering the sensation so distressing) admit of my referring
to it. It was only when asked by a tradesman, brother-in-law of the
person whose fancied proximity distressed me, ' Did you see So-and-so on
Saturday 1 ' that to him alone I mentioned the occurrence."

§ 3. I will insert next a curious little group of cases in which it
is difficult or impossible to assign the impression to the " agency " of
any particular person, and which recall the Greek notion of fnfyuj —
the rumour which spreads from some unknown source, and far
outstrips all known means of transport.1 The type is one where the

1 Something of this sort has been occasionally observed in outbreaks of religious
hysteria. For example, the Rev. P. Barrow Matthews, rector of San Salvador, writes as
follows of a recent case in the Bahamas : —

" When the girls came to [after their fits], they gave very detailed accounts of the
visions they had seen. A great deal of these visions was, of course, nonsense, but one
thing was remarkable — they spoke of people doing things many miles away from the placed
Upon inquiry it was found in some cases that what they had seen corresponded exactly
with the events. One most remarkable feature in this outbreak was that it was not con-
fined to one spot. Almost simultaneously in every settlement on the island (the island is
42 miles long and 12 broad in places) similar outbreaks occurred. Girls living at distances
of 5 or 10 miles from the scene of the 'shouting meetings,' as they were called, would be
seized. Being seized by a kind of frenzy, they would run, as if by inspiration, to the
spot where the rest were assembled, no matter how far."

366 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

scope of accident is so hard to estimate, and which is so distinct from
that of the remainder of our telepathic evidence, that I quote most of
the accounts without evidential numbers. They may possibly serve
to elicit further instances.

Mr. R. Stuart Poole writes from the British Museum on Aug. 1, 1884 :—
" My recollection of the story of my brother's impression of the Duke
of Cambridge's death was this. He was sitting with one or more of his
relations one evening, and suddenly took out his watch, and said, ' Note
the time, the Duke of Cambridge is dead.' The time proved to be correct.
My brother had no acquaintance with the Duke, and no reason for any
interest in him. He was a very clear-headed official man, without what
is called superstition. " REGINALD STUART POOLE."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Poole writes : —

" I do not recollect being present when my brother had the monition,
but my recollection is that he told me himself, or that it was told me by
someone present. It made a strong impression on me at the time."

We find from the Times that the late Duke of Cambridge died, some-
what suddenly, at 9.40 p.m., on July 9th, 1850; but bulletins as to his
health had been published in the last week of June, and on the day before
his death.

Though the case is undoubtedly weakened by the fact that the
person who died was old, and in failing health, such a coincidence —
when backed by others of the same type — seems to claim attention ;
at any rate till one hears of a good many cases where similarly posi-
tive statements have been made by clear-headed practical men, as to
similar matters of which they could know nothing by normal means,
and have proved incorrect. Yet to suppose a direct telepathic transfer
from the dying man to a total stranger would seem extravagant ; and
hardly less extravagant may seem the only alternative that it is easy
to imagine — namely, that the "agency" was of a collective kind,
and consisted in a certain shock of interest in the minds of a con-
siderable number of persons who had already heard the news.

I give three more examples — of which two are properly " border-
land " cases, but are best presented in this connection. It is a
rather quaint accident that the honour of occasioning such psychical
storms should (so far as these instances go) seem reserved for persons
of ducal or imperial rank.

Mr. Gervase Marson, of Birk Crag, Higher Broughton, Manchester,
writes, on Dec. 6, 1883 : —

" On the morning of December 6th, 1879, I suddenly awoke, and sat
up in the bed, as if startled. To my great surprise I found myself utter-
ing the words, ' Portland, Portland.' The next day I read in the papers

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 367

of the death of the Duke of Portland, which I believe took place about
the time when I was involuntarily uttering his "name.

" I cannot account for this experience at all. No conversation
respecting the Duke of Portland had taken place the evening previously ;
I did not know he was ill ; never saw him in my life ; had never been at
any of his residences ; and, in fact, neither knew nor cared anything
about him. 1 was not dreaming just before I awoke, but believe I was
sleeping, as is my wont, quite soundly. "G. MARSON."

[The Daily Telegraph of Dec. 8, 1879, states that the late Duke of
Portland died at 5 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 6.]

Mr. G. W. Waddington, of 26, Bagdale, Whitby, Yorkshire, writes, on
Aug. 5, 1884 :—

" When a passenger on board the ' Satellite ' in the Pacific, on a voyage
from San Francisco to Callao, Peru, I was awoke about 4 a.m. of the 14th
of September, 1852, by the noise of one who jumped on deck and called
out at the cabin door, 'The Duke of Wellington is dead.' The occurrence
was the subject of conversation at breakfast, and being noted, it was
inquired if such an event had taken place from the captain of the port,
before any communication took place with any other person coming on
board. I had seen the Duke but once, and that on the occasion of an
inspection of troops before the Horse Guards, on the Queen's anniversary
coronation day of June 28th, 1842. "G. W. WADDINGTON."

Mr. Waddington admits that the noise of the jumping may have been
a real sound, but says, as regards the voice, " I do not think anyone on
board could have invented any such means of trying one's credulity."

[The Duke of Wellington died on September 14th, 1852, at 3.15 p.m.
Consequently, if the hour of the experience is correctly remembered, it
preceded the death by at least 3 hours, and probably by more.]

Madame No vikoff writes, on Aug. 7, 1884 : —

" A friend of mine, whose accuracy seems to me undeniable, gave me
the following account : —

" On the night when the late Empress Maria Alexandrovna died, my
friend awoke her husband, exclaiming, ' The Empress is dead.' It was not
a dream, but a spontaneous impression. She added that she had had
several experiences of a similar kind. Her husband disliking this subject
I do not wish to apply to her on the matter. " O. K."

[We find from the Times that the Empress died at 8 a.m., on June 3,
1880. She had been known for some months to be in a critical state.]

Comparable with these cases1 are the two following, which, if more

1 The following narrative is too amusing not to be quoted. It is from A Memoir of
C. Maync Young, with Extracts from his Son's Journal, by the Rev. Julian C. Young,
pp. 337-340. After describing his liability, when over-fatigued, to persistent inward-
impressions of words, amounting perhaps to a low stage of auditory hallucination, Mr.
Young continues: —

" On waking on Monday night last, I was possessed, as it were, by four mystic
words, each of one syllable, conveying no more idea to my mind than if they were
gibberish, and yet delivered with as much solemnity of tone, deliberation of manner, and
pertinacity of sequence, as if they were meant to convey to me some momentous intima-
tion. They were all the more exciting that they were unintelligible, and apparently

368 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

than accidental coincidences, can only be accounted for by the fact
that the idea was " in the air." The hypothesis is here, perhaps, a
little less difficult, as the original impression was of a sort which
affected numbers vividly and simultaneously.

(387) From Mr. J. A. Edmonds, 16, Waterloo Road South,
Wolverhampton. .. J883

" At a period during the formation of the Thames Tunnel, the date of
which I cannot recall without reference to the daily papers, my brother,
Cyrus Read Edmonds, was head-master of the Leicestershire Proprietary
Grammar School, at Leicester, and lived almost close to the school
buildings.

" On one occasion, when he was in bed, his wife was awoke (I think, at
somewhere about 5 or 6 l in the morning) by a loud exclamation of terror
from my brother. She inquired the cause, and he, in a state of horror, said
that he had seen the Thames Tunnel break through, that the workmen
rushed to the staircases or ladders, the means of exit, but one poor fellow
(less active than the others who escaped) was overtaken by the rush of
water and perished. My brother was in a state of tremor and distress,
such as a humane man might be supposed to suffer as a witness of such a
scene. He begged his wife not to sleep, but to converse until it should be
time to rise. She urged that it was but a dream, and that the effect would
pass off if he could get a little sleep. ' A. dream,' he said, 'it is no dream.
I distinctly saw all that I have described.'

" On the day in the early morning of which this vision occurred, my

could not serve any ostensible purpose. I could not exclude them by putting cotton wool
in my ears, for they came from within and not from without. To try to supplant them by
encouraging a fresh train of ideas was hopeless : my will and my reason were alike
subservient to some irresistible occult force. The words which beset me were 'dowd,'
'swell,' 'pull,' 'court,' and they were separated as I have written them into mono-
syllables, and were repeated with an incisive distinctness and monotonous precision which
was quite maddening. I sat up in my bed and struck a light to make sure that I was
awake, and not dreaming. All the while were reiterated, as if in a circle, the same
wild words : 'Dowd,' 'swell,' ' pull,' 'court.' I lay down again and put out my candle,
'dowd,' 'swell,' 'pull,' 'court.' I turned on my left side, 'dowd,' 'swell,' 'pull,'
'court.' I turned on my right, 'dowd,' 'swell,' 'pull,' 'court.' I endeavoured as a
means of dispersing these evil spirits — for they began to assume the importance of spirits
in my heated brain — to count sheep over a stile, but still 'dowd,' 'swell,' 'pull,' 'court,'
rang in my ears and reverberated through my mind."

After many vain efforts, Mr. Young at last fell asleep. He mentioned his experience
next day to his father and to some friends, the Misses Smith. On the following
Thursday, he says : —

"I walked into Folthorp's Library to read the papers; and, as usual, ran my eye
down the births, marriages, and deaths in the Times. As I came to the obituary the
following notice caught my sight : —

'"On Tuesday night, November llth, John E. Dowdswell, of Pull Court, Tewkes-
bury.' [We have verified this notice in the Times for November 13th, 1851. The name
is Dowdeswell.] So that probably, on the self-same night, at the very time when this
gentleman's name and residence were so unaccountably and painfully present to my
mind, he was actually dying." [This last expression is misleading, as the death did not
take place till the following night.]

Mr. Myers says : —

" I have spoken to the Misses Smith as to this occurrence, which they distinctly
remember. They were slightly acquainted with Mr. Dowdeswell, but Mr. Young was a
stranger to him entirely."

1 I don't assert this. — J. A. E.

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 369

brother and his wife were engaged to a dinner-party at the house of a
gentleman, whose name, I believe, was Whetstone. Before they left the
drawing-room for the dining-room, his host said to my brother, ' Have
you heard the sad news from London ? ' He said, ' No, what is it ? ' He
replied, ' The Thames Tunnel has broken in. All the people in the works
escaped, except one poor fellow who was overwhelmed.' l My brother
thought that his wife might have told their host, and that they would
rally him out of his depression. But on looking at her, the look of
astonishment quite precluded this notion. He asked his host if he were
joking, at which he was much surprised, and asked how a joke could
possibly be elicited from such an occurrence.

" My brother then said, ' I saw it happen, just as you have related it, so
my wife will assure you, and I am yet suffering from the exhaustion and
depression produced.' He then told the company what I have related above.

"I heard the whole relation both from him [by letter at the time, and
vivd voce some weeks afterwards] and his wife [both now dead], and many
of our friends were acquainted with the history.

"J. AUGUSTUS EDMONDS."

The construction of the Thames Tunnel lasted from 1825 to 1843.
During this period there were five irruptions of the water of more or less
importance. The fourth was the only occasion on which one man was
drowned. The Times of Nov. 4th, 1837, records that at a few minutes
before 4 o'clock on that morning, a sudden irruption of the river took place
and filled the tunnel. J. Francis, engineer on duty at the time of the acci-
dent, stated that, on discovering the water was beginning to overflow he
" immediately gave the alarm for all hands to run, and from that time
the filling of the tunnel occupied less than five minutes. We then ran
with all speed to the shaft." The water lulled slightly, and he in company
with two other men " went down the archway about 200 feet, and saw the
water rolling up the roadway with a terrific appearance. We then ran to
the staircase, and finally ascended to the top of the shaft. The water
arrived a few seconds after us. I then had all the names called over, and
found only one missing, Garland, an old man, a miner."

(388) From a book caUed Pith (Triibner and Co., 1881), by Newton
Crosland, pp. 63-4.

"In October, 1857, about 1 o'clock in the day, I was going from my
office to sign an export bond at the Custom House, Lower Thames Street,
a distance of about a quarter of a mile. I was in my usual satisfactory
state, of health ; my mind was occupied with merely common-place ideas ;
the traffic in the streets was going on with ordinary monotonous activity,
and nothing was apparent there to wake in me the slightest trepidation,
when, just as I was crossing Great Tower Street, I was seized with an un-
accountable panic. I conceived a dread that I might be attacked by a
tiger, and the idea of this horrible fate so haunted me that I absolutely
began running in hot haste, and I did not stop until I found myself safe "
inside the walls of the Custom House. Anything more contemptibly
absurd than this apparently causeless fear could scarcely be imagined — a

1 We have ascertained from the Post Office that at that time the London mail-coach
would reach Leicester about 6 p.m. ; so that the report may easily have arrived before
dinner-time.

VOL. II. 2 B

370 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

merchant in the streets of London in danger of a wild beast ! The possi-
bility of such a disaster seemed to me to be so ridiculous, the moment I
thought about it, that I laughed at myself for allowing so foolish and morbid
a fancy to take possession of my mind, and I really considered that I must
be fast becoming stupidly nervous. The feeling of apprehension soon,
however, passed away, and wonder at my own weakness became predomi-
nant. The next morning I took up the Times newspaper, when to my
utter astonishment, I read that at precisely the same time when I felt the
crazy fear, a tiger had actually escaped from its cage while it was being
conveyed from the London Docks, seriously injured two children, and had,
to the terror of every observer, ferociously misconducted himself in the
public street of Wapping — about a mile, as the crow flies, from the spot
where I was passing."

The following passage occurs in the Times on Oct. 27, 1857 : —
" Frightful Occurrence. — Yesterday afternoon, about 1 o'clock, as
a cattle van was conveying from London Docks a Bengal tiger, the
door gave way and the animal bounded into the road, encountered a little
boy, sprang upon him, lacerating him in a frightful manner," &c.

A subsequent report, October 30th, states that two boys were injured.

Mr. Crosland writes to us, on June 7, 1884 : —

"42, Crutched Friars, London.

" I am afraid I cannot help you much in your attempt to strengthen
my evidence respecting ' the tiger story.' 'When on my way to the Custom
House I felt the dread of a tiger in the streets, which impelled me to run
to a refuge. I was not so much disturbed as to exhibit any signs of alarm.
After I reached the Custom House, I soon recovered my composure, and
thought my fear was so causeless and silly that I did not mention the cir-
cumstance to anyone. I considered that to do so would be to make myself
appear ridiculous. " NEWTON CROSLAND."

In another letter he says, " I am quite certain that my sensations were
felt at the precise time when the incident occurred at Wapping."

§ 4. We come now to a group where the impression, though
indefinite in character, recalling the purely emotional cases of
Vol. I., Chap. VII., had reference to a particular individual known
to the percipient, as in case 86.

(389) From a clergyman, who desires that his name may not be
published. He writes as follows to his daughter : — « 1882

"When your brother E. was at Winchester College (about 1856 or
1857), on going to bed one Saturday night, I could not sleep. When your
mother came into the room, she found me restless and uneasy. I told her
that a strong impression had seized me that something had happened to
your brother. The next day, your mother, on writing to E., asked me if
I had any message for him, when I replied : ' Tell him I particularly want
to know if anything happened to him yesterday.' Your mother laughed,
and made the remark that I should be frightened if a letter in Dr.
Moberly's handwriting reached us on Monday. I replied, ' I should be
afraid to open it.' On the Monday morning a letter did come from Dr.

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 371

Moberly, to tell me that E. had met with an accident, that one of his
schoolfellows had thrown a piecs of cheese at him which had struck one of
his eyes ; and that the medical man, Mr. Wickham, thought I had better
come down immediately and take your brother to a London oculist."

In answer to inquiries, the narrator writes to us, on March 13, 1885: —

" The impression, with regard to my son, was on a Saturday. The
accident had occurred on the Thursday previously, but Dr. Moberly did
not write to inform me of it till Saturday, when the Winchester medical
man had ordered that a London oculist should be consulted.

" I cannot call to mind any occasion on which I received a like
impression which was not verified. There is one which occurred in former
years, which I call to mind. When at school and saying my prayers one
evening, I was impressed with the idea that my eldest brother was dying,
and this was the case, as I was informed the day following. I did not
know at the time that he was ill."

[The first of these cases could hardly have been presented alone, owing to
the lack of precision in the coincidence. But its interest is increased by the
occurrence of the other more precise experience to the same person.]

(390) From Mrs. Brandon, resident in Canada, who wrote from Farm-
hill, Donegal, Ireland. "January, 1884.

" The steamship ' Canadian,' in which Mr. Brandon was sailing to
England, was shipwrecked in the Atlantic, east of the straits of Belleisle,
on the 4th of June, 1861. She foundered in the ice, and 38 lives were lost.
In the evening of the same day, Mr. James Patton, a merchant in Montreal
(where we were then living), was teaching Mr. Brandon's Tuesday
evening class in Great St. James' Street Methodist Church, I being present
at the time. Mr. Patton said, ' This day my mind was urgently impressed
with the necessity to pray for Mr. Brandon — so much so, particularly at
the hour of noon, that I had to leave off writing about my business in my
office, and retire to a private place, and pour out my soul in prayer to God
for Mr. Brandon.' We could not understand at the time the meaning of
the mysterious circumstance; but 10 days afterwards we understood it all.
At the very hour when Mr. Patton was engaged in prayer for Mr. Brandon,
he (Mr. B.) was standing on the wreck of a sinking ship, and was
miraculously saved from a watery grave."

[Mr. Brandon has sent us an account of the foundering of the ship,
and the loss of 38 men. Mr. Patton is deceased.]

(391) From a letter entitled "Brain Waves — a Theory," written by
Mr. James Knowles, which appeared in the Spectator, 30th January, 1869.

" Mr. Woolner, the sculptor, tells me the following story of two young
men — one of them a personal friend of his own now living. These two
men lived for very long as great friends, but ultimately quarrelled, shortly
before the departure of one of them for New Zealand. The emigrant had
been absent for many years, and his friend at home (Mr. Woolner's
informant) never having kept up correspondence with him, naturally almost
lost the habit of thinking of him or his affairs. One day, however, as he
sat in his rooms in a street near Oxford Street, the thought of his friend
came suddenly upon him, accompanied by a most restless and undefinable
discomfort. He could by no means account for it, but, finding the feeling

VOL. II. 2 B 2

372 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

grew more and more oppressive, tried to throw it off by change of occupa-
tion. Still the discomfort grew, until it amounted to a sort of strange
horror. He thought he must be sickening for a bad illness, and at length,
being unable to do anything else, went out of doors and walked up and
down the busiest streets, hoping by the sight and sound of multitudes of
men and ordinary things to dissipate his strange misery. Not, however,
until he had wandered to and fro in the most wretched state of feeling for
more than two hours, utterly unable to shake off a sort of vague conscious-
ness of his friend, did the impression leave him, and his usual frame of
mind return. So greatly was he struck and puzzled by all this, that he
wrote down the precise date of the day and hour of the occurrence, fully
expecting to have news shortly of or from his friend. And, surely, when
the next mail or the next but one arrived, there came the horrible news
that at that very day and hour (allowance being made for latitude and
longitude) his friend had been made a prisoner by the natives of New
Zealand, and put to a slow death with the most frightful tortures."

Mr. Woolner, in writing to us in August, 1883, after making some
trifling corrections, says : —

" Mr. Knowles has told the story accurately; and having told him only
once, I am surprised that he should have been so faithful in his narrative.
I have not seen or heard of the person for many years, and know not the
least where to find him. I am very sorry I cannot help you any further."

The name of the man who was killed was Cooke, or Cook. Mr.
Woolner has given us the name of his informant, but desires that it may
not be published. We have tried to trace him without success. Mr.
Woolner says : "I believe he was perfectly sincere when he told me the
story in or about 1850 " ; and adds that the incident occurred some time
between 1842 and 1846.

Of the three impressions in the following account two were con-
nected at the moment with a particular individual. The three,
though each alone might easily have been accidental, are worth
presenting as having occurred in the experience of a single person ;
and they find their most convenient place here, though two of them
seem to have been of the " borderland " class. In the second case,
the narrator's experience followed the death (she thinks) by perhaps
a day or two ; nor can she be certain that the coincidence in the first
case was closer than this, though it may have been closer.

(392) Miss Loveday, of Arlescote, Banbury, enclosed to us, on
February 14, 1884, the following letter from her sister, who desires that
her own name should not be published. In conversation she described
herself as a matter-of-fact person ; and she is certain that she has never on
other occasions had impressions at all resembling those described.

" I have had three different intimations of death — on Uncle William's
death, on Henry H.'s [a brother-in-law's] death, and on B.'s. The two
first were more sensations than anything else. It is a thing hardly to be
described. It is like nothing else. Not alarming ; rather like one's idea
of the severance of nerves ; of something cut off, that is, and lost to your-

IL] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 373

self, of a want, a something gone from you. On the occasion of Henry's
death, I did not know who was gone. I was away in Germany ; but I
awoke with the sensation, and I told my children, ' I have had that feeling
that I have had before on the loss of a relation. I do not know who is
gone ; but someone seems gone ; perhaps it is Aunt Edward.' Then in a
day or so came the news of Henry's death. [The narrator was warmly
attached to both her uncle and her brother-in-law.]

" The last occasion (i.e., of B.'s death) it was the most distinct of all.
[Miss Loveday says, " B. was an old servant of our family, who was very dear
to us all."] It was in 1880, in the autumn. I was in Germany. I had gone
to lie down after the early dinner on Sunday, to rest before the long walk
to church ; and I fell asleep. I had the most calm and delightful awaking
— no actual words, but a happy feeling that B. was passing away to
Heaven peacefully, and that I was intended to know it. If I put into
words what my impression was, it was this — ' As if some spirit had gently
touched me and said, " B. is passing away, rise up and pray." ' I at once
rose up and went into the next room, and told my boys 'I have had an inti-
mation that B. is dying ; remember it. I shall hear.' I then went back to
my bedside to kneel in prayer. The happiness and peace of the few
minutes was intense. I had longed to see him once again before he died,
and had feared I should not be in England in time, though I was going in
a few days, as I knew his end was near ; but being led to know the day
and hour was to me like a leave-taking and a good-bye from himself, and
I felt it was permitted to assure and comfort me. Two or three days later
I heard it was that very day he died ; and when I got to England and saw
his wife, Cath, I found it was the same time, allowing for my being nearly
40 minutes to the eastward on the globe. The two first intimations,
though not alarming, were not of the comforting, reassuring, and happy
feeling of the last."

We find from the Register of Deaths that B. died on October 10, 1880.
The two previous deaths took place on April 2, 1875, and January 21, 1878,
respectively.

One of the narrator's sons writes on Jan. 28, 1886 : —

"I distinctly remember that one afternoon (I think Wednesday),
about two weeks before we came away from Germany, mother was lying
down, and suddenly she said to me that she felt as if a friend, someone
whom she had known for a very long time, was at that moment dying.
She did not think it was a relation, because the feeling was not the same
as when Uncle Henry died. She thought it was very probably B., but did
not -say that she felt as if it was of necessity B. who was dying. I did
not feel surprised, because almost exactly the same had happened when
Uncle Henry died, and yet I felt equally sure that it was correct.

" About three days afterwards we got a letter to say that B. had
died on the very afternoon in question, at about the same time as events
above recorded, i.e., at about 3.30 p.m., as nearly as I can recollect."

The other son writes from Cambridge, on Jan. 26, 1886 : —

" I shall be happy to testify to the fact of my mother having
mentioned to me that she had a presentiment that ' B.' was passing away
and that this was anterior to any communication even of an illness."

[The force of the last coincidence is of course greatly diminished by the
fact of the percipient's having known that B.'s " end was near." The

374 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

narrator thinks that she was aware of her uncle's being rather seriously
ill ; but she had no similar knowledge in the case of her brother-in-law,
whose death was quite unexpected.]

(393) E. M. Arndt, a well-known writer on political and social
questions, in his Schriften fur and an seine Lieben DeutscJien (Leipzig,
1845), Vol. III., pp. 523-4, records two telepathic experiences of the
emotional sort which befell the same person.

The first occurred when Arndt was under the tuition (apparently) of
Dr. Masius, at Barth. One of his fellow-pupils, while at play, had broken
an arm. Just as a messenger was starting to convey the news to the
boy's mother, who lived at some miles' distance, she herself rushed in, ex-
claiming, "My son, my son ! What accident has befallen him1?" From Arndt's
description, it seems certain that he was himself present on the occasion.

The same lady, Arndt continues (but without naming his authority),
was one day calling at a neighbour's house, when suddenly she started up
and called for her carriage, under an impulse of uncontrollable appre-
hension, and found, on arriving at her home, that an accident had
occurred by which her youngest child had been scalded to death.

§ 5. This last incident leads us on to the next group, where
the emotional impression was not connected, when felt, with the
person to whom (if telepathic) it was due. The following case
exhibits the element of actual physical ^discomfort on the percipient's
part, as in Nos. 22, 70, and 76, and notably in 391 above.

(394) From Mr. Frederick H. Poole, Sneyd Park, Durdham Down,
Bristol. "June 10th, 1884.

" Upwards of 40 years ago, when I was about 12 years of age, I was
visiting at my uncle's vicarage in Gloucestershire. I had been there for
a month previously, and was one afternoon sketching in the neighbour-
hood, in good health and spirits, when suddenly I became very depressed
and ill, which induced me to return to the house. I told my uncle my
symptoms, and expressed my belief that I should die,1 and asked his per-
mission for me to return home that afternoon, for I should like to bid
farewell to all at home, especially to my mother, to whom I was very
devotedly attached. Nothing he said in reply would pacify me, until he
promised I might return on the morrow if I felt no better. After a
restless night, I felt worn and weary — as one would naturally feel after
unusual excitement — but my intense longing to return home had subsided,
and I consented to remain. By that afternoon's post a letter reached my uncle
from my home, announcing the death of my mother on the previous afternoon.

" Having given above the unvarnished fact, I am disposed to leave the
subject without comment.

" I will only add that I had no knowledge of my mother's illness at
the date of aforesaid ' incident.' We heard a few days previously that she
was progressing favourably after her recent confinement.

" FREDERICK H. POOLE."

In answer to an inquiry, Mr. Poole says : —

1 Precisely this experience is recorded in cases 22 and 76.

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 375

" I never had, excepting on the occasion named in my last letter, the
unaccountable sort of depression mentioned therein."

(395) From Mrs. Herbert Davy, of Burdon Place, Newcastle-on-Tyne,
the narrator of the more definite case No. 45. « December 1883

" It was in August, a few years ago — my husband was at the moors.
I drove to a nursery garden to procure some flowers. I waited outside the
gate under the shelter of some trees, sending the groom in for the flowers.

" It was one of the hottest afternoons I ever experienced. My ponies,
usually restive, stood perfectly still. Before I had waited there many
minutes, an unaccountable feeling took possession of me as though I fore-
saw and recognised the shadow of a coming sorrow. I immediately
associated it with my husband — that some accident had befallen him.
With this miserable apprehension upon me, I got through the rest of the
day and evening as best I could, but weighed down by the shadow, though
I spoke of it that night to no one.

" Nothing had happened to my husband. But a little child — a relation,
who had lived with us and been almost as our own — had died that day
rather suddenly in Kent, where she was then visiting her parents. I had
thought a good deal of little Ada, as I sat waiting in the phaeton that
summer afternoon — had pictured her reaching out her hands to me ; but
the great apprehension I felt was for my husband, not for the child."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the child died on Aug. 14, 1875.

A friend who was with Mrs. Davy writes : —

"Newcastle, January 5th, 1884.

" I was driving with Mrs. Davy on the day she had the strange pre-
sentiment, while waiting outside the nursery gardens. She spoke of it at
the time, and was quite depressed and unlike herself. Mr. Davy being from
home, she feared something had happened to him. "AMY GRACE."

After an interview with Mrs. Davy on April 15th, 1884, Professor
Sidgwick writes : —

"She affirmed unhesitatingly that the feeling was a sudden unique
shock of sadness, quite unlike any depression of spirits which she had ever
felt at any other time — she had had experiences of such depressions. The
girl, Ada, was likely to be thinking of her."

(396) From Mr. S. N. Wilkinson, J.P., Apsley Cottage, Stockport.

" 1884.

"I was at Blackpool in the March of 1881, and about tea time I felt
a strong conviction of some unknown evil which made me perfectly rest-
less. Next morning, a letter came from the manager of my works in
Stockport, reporting that the day before he had to stop the mill in
consequence of the breaking down of the main driving wheel. My niece
remarked that this was an explanation of my restlessness, but I was not
satisfied with the explanation, and said to her, ' That is not it, it is some-
thing worse.' On arriving at home, the day following, I found two tele*
grams, one announcing the death of one of my most intimate friends, the
other inviting me to the funeral. He died at Aberdeen. At the time of
my uneasiness I was not aware of his illness. I attended his funeral
there. This was not the only case in which I had presentiments, but it
is the most remarkable that I have experienced. " g_ jj\ WILKINSON."

376 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

We asked Mr. Wilkinson if he would procure for us his niece's
corroboration ; but he said that he did not feel disposed to take any
further trouble in the matter. In conversation he described the impression
as quite unique in its strength, preventing him from settling to anything ;
and he entirely disclaimed any tendency to nervousness or unaccountable
fancies.

§ 6. I turn now to the production of motor effects — sometimes
of a blind sort, sometimes under a sense of being wanted — which
must be understood in the sense explained in Vol. I., p. 292.

(397) From Mr. F. Morgan, of Nugent Hill, Bristol.

"July llth, 1883.

" On Monday, February 14th, 1853, I was listening to a lecture by
the late Geo. Dawson, of Birmingham, in the Broadmead Rooms in
Bristol. I frequently spent my evenings at lectures, concerts, &c., and
often took a little walk afterwards on my way home. I had lived nearly
all my life (27 years) at home with my mother, whom I strongly resemble in
face and in many characteristics. We were much attached to each other.

" I was thoroughly interested in the lecture, and had so little intention
of leaving before its conclusion, that I remember noticing a friend among the
audience, and making up my mind for a walk with him on my way home.

" The lecture must have been more than half through — I was not
tired, and had no reason to move — when I noticed, at the side of the
platform farthest from the back entrance to the hall, a door which I had
never seen before, flush with the panels, and it suddenly became the most
natural thing that I should walk half the length of the room, and away
from the main entrance, in order to see if this door would open. I turned
the handle, passed through, closed the door gently behind me, and found
myself in the dark among the wooden supports of the platform.

" I clambered along towards a glimmer of light at the other end,
passed round a side passage, crossed the end of the hall to the main
entrance, without any thought of the lecture which was still going on,
and walked home quietly, without excitement or ' impression ' of any kind,
and quite unconscious, till long after, that I had done anything unusual.

" On opening my door with a latch-key, I smelt fire, and found my
mother in great alarm. She had also noticed the strong burning smell,
had been over the house with her servant, and was longing for my
return. On going upstairs, I saw flames issuing from a back window of the
next house, immediately gave the alarm, removed my mother to a safe
distance, and then had two or three hours' struggle with the flames. The
adjoining house was destroyed, but mine only slightly damaged.

" The point which has seemed to me most striking, whenever I have
recalled this occurrence, is the entire absence of any presentiment or
impression on my mind. I should probably have shaken off anything of
the kind had I been aware of it, and refused obedience. Neither was
there on my mother's part any intentional exertion of her will upon me,
only a strong wish for my presence, which must have begun about the
time I left my seat. " FREDK. MORGAN."

Mr. Morgan adds, in reply to our regular inquiry, that he has never
done anything similar to what is here described on any other occasion.

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 377

He also sends a plan of the lecture-room, which shows that he walked
in a dark passage round nearly three sides of the hall. " But going
home" he adds, " was not in my thoughts when I moved." He told his
mother of his experience next day.

We have confirmed the date of the fire in the Bristol Times. The
account there given states that Mr. Morgan's house, though only slightly
damaged, was " in great danger, and only escaped destruction by the in-
tervention of strong party-walls."

(398) The following passage, in the original, is a continuation of that
quoted in Vol. I., p. 274, from Der Sogenannte Lebens-Magnetismus oder
Hypnotismus, by Dr. E. L. Fischer, of Wurzburg, a book the reverse of
credulous in its general tone.

" I had accepted an invitation to a jubilee, and went to the place in
the afternoon. I had not been at table more than an hour, when I was
seized with a peculiar feeling that I must leave — that someone was
waiting for me. I had no more peace ; I was expecting every moment
to be summoned away. I remained half-an-hour under the continuous
pressure of the feeling that someone was most strongly desiring my
presence. Then I got up and went home to bed, in the confident
expectation of being called off to someone at a distance in the course of
the night. It was quite impossible to go to sleep, for every two minutes
I was raising my head, to listen whether there was not a pull at the house-
bell. In a quarter of an hour there was really a ring. I sprang out of
bed with one bound, and was told that I must come to a sick woman at a
village about a couple of miles off. On my arrival I found the patient in
a piteous condition. She could neither speak nor move her limbs, though
still able to see, hear, and feel. I did all I could, and departed, with the
promise to come again later. On the second occasion, I found her much
better, and she now told me how earnestly she had been longing for me to
come on the previous afternoon and evening. Her husband had not re-
turned home till late in the evening, and had then lost no time in sending
for me. So the matter was explained.

" These two incidents [i. e., this and the one already quoted] prove to
my satisfaction that there are such things as sympathetic divinations
(Ahnungen) ; and I could supply other instances, though of a less striking
character, from my own experience, besides similar experiences which
have been reported to me by my friends."

[I have sufficiently expressed dissent from Dr. Fischer's view that
telepathy can be demonstrated from a few instances.]

(399) From Mr. William Blakeway (a bricklayer), of New Ross,
Rowley Regis, near Dudley. « 1885.

" I was in my usual place at chapel on the Sunday afternoon, in May,
1876, when all at once I thought I must go home. Seemingly against my
wish, I took my hat. When reaching the chapel gates, I felt an impulse
that I must hasten home as quick as possible, and I ran with all my might
without stopping to take breath. Meeting a friend, who asked why I
hurried so, I passed him almost without notice. When I reached home
I found the house full of smoke, and my little boy, 3 years old, all on fire,
alone in the house. I at once tore the burning clothes from off him, and
was just in time to save his life. It has always been a mystery to me, as

378 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

no person whispered a word to me, and no one knew anything about the
fire till after I made the alarm at home, which was more than a quarter
of a mile from the chapel. This is a true statement.

" WILLIAM BLAKEWAY."

Mr. C. Smith, of 1 2, Short Street, Black Heath, near Dudley, writes : —
" I beg to say I heard of the incident from Mr. Blakeway himself in a
few days after the occurrence, and never forgot it, as I thought it very
remarkable. " C. SMITH."

Mr. Blakeway went through the account to me vivd voce in such a way
that I could not doubt the vividness of the experience ; he has never had
any other at all resembling it. The friend whom he hurried by was one
to whom he invariably talked for some minutes when he met him. He
thinks that he probably took about a minute and a half in getting home,
and that his first impression may quite have coincided with the accident
to the child, who was alone in the house and caught fire in reaching for
something.

(400) From Herr Heinrich von Struve, procured through the kindness
of Mr. J. B. Johnston, M.A., of 17, Pilrig Street, Edinburgh. The
original was in German. « 25, piMg street, Edinburgh.

"July 10th, 1885.

" It was in the night between the 9th and 10th of November, 1835,
that I felt a sudden and peculiar yearning, which laid hold of me with
great intensity, for my dear mother, who lived in Carlsruhe, in the
Grand Duchy of Baden. I myself was living with my elder brother in
Poland, and intended to pass the winter with him. This yearning affected
me so strongly that I resolved to move to Carlsruhe without delay, which
I explained to my brother at breakfast, after I had informed him of my
sudden feeling. It was no small and insignificant journey in those days and
at that advanced season of the year. Carlsruhe was over 130 German miles
from where I was living. I passed [on horseback] through the province
of Posen, through Silesia, Saxony, and, after crossing the Erz Mountains
and Thuringia in deep snow, through Bavaria. At Jena, where an aunt
lived who had always been in the most intimate relations with my mother,
I intended to rest for a few days. But as she told me that she had
received very sad news from Carlsruhe, according to which her dear friend
had been attacked by nervous fever and given up by the doctors, I could
not rest, and in the greatest consternation and anxiety recommenced my
journey, and reached Carlsruhe on the 4th of December.

" With sinking heart I betook myself first to my brother, who was
attached to the Russian Embassy at the Court of Baden, and rushed up
the steps, where my brother received me with great astonishment. On my
eager inquiry after my mother's health, he told me that the danger had
passed off, and that she was recovering. Then I hurried swiftly to my
mother's house, where my sisters lived with her, and they confirmed the
happy news. As I then learnt from my eldest sister, the chief crisis of
the illness occurred on the night between the 9th and 10th of November,
when my beloved mother, in her delirium, continually spoke with intense
love and care for her youngest son, called me and longed for me.

" H. VON STKUVE."

In answer to inquiries, Herr von Struve says, " I have never on any

ii.] IDEAL, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTOR CASES. 379

other occasion experienced an affection of the same sort, and naturally
therefore have never had occasion to take action on one."

[This case is very remote ; but the narrator is not likely to be wrong
in remembering that he undertook a long and arduous journey in conse-
quence of his impression.]

I will conclude with the only pendant that we have to M.
LieT>eault's remarkable case at the end of Chap. VII. in the preceding
volume. But a second-hand account of so exceptional an occurrence,
received from a person who himself only heard of it some years after
it took place, cannot of course carry much weight, at any rate as far
as details are concerned.

(401) From Mr. S. Jennings, of Westbury House, Denmark Hill, S.E.

" March 24th, 1885.

" In reply to your note, the occurrence [which is narrated below] was
related to me by Mr. Nelson himself, since dead. He told me, as nearly as
I can remember, in the year 1868, but the event itself must have taken
place four or five years before.

" At the time he told me he was frequently in the habit of thus
writing under some external influences, some of which he describes as
agreeable, and others very much the reverse. He showed me a book
in which these writings were made, and I was much surprised at the
singular differences in the apparently various handwritings.

" I never had any reason to do otherwise than believe what he said,
particularly as he was always very reticent on the subject, which he
said concerned nobody but himself. " SAMUEL JENNINGS."

The following is from a letter written by Mr. Jennings to Professor
Barrett, on September 26th, 1882. After describing Mr. Nelson's
automatic writing, and his inability to get rid of the consciousness of some
external presence or influence " without providing writing materials," the
account continues : —

"On one occasion this feeling seized him in the train when travelling
from Raneegunge to Calcutta, and he tore a leaf out of a book, and laid
it on the seat of the carriage, his hand grasping a pencil resting upon
it. Ordinarily, to write under such conditions would be impossible in
a train rushing along ; the motion would effectually prevent it. Never-
theless, a long communication was made purporting to be from his
daughter, who was at school in England. It contained a simple account
of her illness and death, described the circumstances under which it
occurred, and the persons who were present, adding that she wished to
say good-bye to her father before leaving. This threw Mr. N. into a
state of great excitement, for he did not even know of his daughter's
illness. He went home and said he was very uneasy about Bessie in
England. Finally, he gave this note to his married daughter, Mrs. R.*
to keep till they could hear by the ordinary post. The child had in
reality died that very day, and under the very circumstances thus
mysteriously communicated to Mr. N. I have subsequently received
some corroborative evidence regarding this young lady's death from an
entire stranger to the family."

[CHAP.

CHAPTER III.

DREAMS.

§ 1. THE cases to be now presented are supplementary to those of
Vol. I., Chap. VIII.; and will be arranged, as far as possible, in similar
groups.

The first group is that of simultaneous dreams which correspond
in content.

(402) From Mr. A. A. Watts, 19, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, S.W.

" 1883.

"When I was a young child, about the year 1830, my father had been
called out of town by business : and my mother took me into her room to
sleep. She awoke in the middle of the night, or early morning, out of a
dream in which it had appeared to her that the servant was attempting to
murder her with a knife. I had awakened at the same time, and was
sobbing in my crib by her bedside. Upon her inquiring what was amiss
with me, I replied that I had dreamt that John was murdering her with a
knife. She always affirmed that, to the best of her knowledge, I had at
that time never heard the word murder. She rang up the servants ; and
wrote immediately to her husband, who returned to town at once, and
discharged the man without more ado. My mother had had no previous
antipathy to the man, rather the contrary, for he was a very clever and
handy servant, and had been a sailor. We had never heard then nor did
we hear subsequently anything to his disadvantage."

[This evidence cannot rank as better than second-hand.]

(403) The following letter appeared in the Nation for November 26th,

1885 :—

" SIR, — I have been much interested in the cases of telepathy reported
in the Nation, and give the following, which happened here last week.
Mrs. F. dreamed her watch was broken, and was greatly afflicted to see it
all in pieces, and in her distress awoke. Feeling very ill, she awakened
her husband to go for a physician. His first words on awaking were,
' Who broke your watch ? '

" M. E. W.

"Dover, N. H., November 16th, 1885."

IIL] DREAMS. 381

The writer of this letter, Dr. Mary E. Webb, was applied to for details,
and wrote to us as follows : —

"37, Trowbridge Street, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.

« February 3rd, 1886.

" Near midnight, Mrs. Flynn dreamed her watch was broken. She
saw the crystal and all the works crushed to fragments. She awoke in
some pain, and aroused her husband from a sound sleep, and his first
words, according to her report, were, ' Who broke your watch 1 How did
your watch get broken ? ' &c. Then she told me she laughed in spite of
the pain, and told him that was just what she had dreamed before the pain
had awakened her ; then they found their dreams coincided exactly as to
the manner in which the watch was broken ; and that the watch was got
and examined, to make sure it was not as they had dreamed.

" This they related to me the same night, as something worth the
telling. They thought it singular and interesting. I asked them what
they had said about the watch before going to bed, and they said
' Nothing ' ; that they had not thought of it at all.

" MARY E. WEBB."

In the next three cases, the telepathic influence of a distant agent
seems to be involved, and may have acted independently on the
dreamers (cf. case 127, and see Chap. XII., § 2) ; or one dreamer,
so influenced, may have infected the others.

(404) From the Rev. P. T. Drayton, Undercliff, Portishead.

" January, 1884.

" When a child in the West Indies, there was an old African woman
who had great attractions for me. She was full of ghost stories, and,
though a Christian, had not, I fear, discarded obeah ideas altogether.
Sometimes she would come in to show us how she would look dressed
in her grave clothes, which she kept by her, and we would make merry
over it. Well ! several years afterwards I saw in my dreams her figure
by my bedside in full grave-costume ; it was very vivid, and I awoke with
a determination that I would eat no more late suppers.

" At breakfast, next morning, my sister told us that she had had much
the same dream, but as she had never seen the old woman masquerading
in her shroud, as I had, it made more impression. Some time afterwards
we had a letter from W. I. mentioning the old woman's death on the day
on which these dreams occurred.

" This occurred some 45 years ago, and I cannot be responsible for its
strict accuracy.

" P. T. DRAYTON."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Drayton says : —

" Taking your queries seriatim I would reply, first, that my sister h'as
been dead over 30 years. Second, that my sister and self had the dream on
the same night, without having been either talking or thinking of the old
woman. Third, that to the best of my recollection the tidings of the old
woman's death arrived shortly after."

382 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

A laxly, a connection of Mr. Drayton's, through whom we procured
this narrative, says, " All the family knew of these dreams."

(405) From Fynes Moryson's Itinerary (London, 1617), Part I.,
Chap. II., p. 19.

" I may lawfully swear that which my kinsmen have heard witnessed
by my brother Henry whilst he lived, that in my youth at Cambridge I
had the like dreame of my mother's death, where, my brother Henry lying
with me, early in the morning I dreamed that my mother passed by with
sad countenance, and told me that she could not come to my commence-
ment ; I being within five months to proceed Master of Arts, and she
having promised at that time to come to Cambridge : and when I related
this dreame to my brother, both of us awaking together in a sweat, he
protested to me that he had dreamed the very same, and when he had not
the least knowledge of our mother's sicknesse, neither in our youthfull
affections were in any affected by the strangeness of this dreame, yet the
next carrier brought us word of our mother's death."

(406) From Mr. Swithinbank, Ormleigh, Mowbray Road, Upper
Norwood, S.E.

"May 26th, 1883.

" During the Peninsular War, my father and his two brothers, William
and John, were quartered at Dover. They were natives of Bradford, and
had there living their father, mother, and the rest of their family. On
one special night my father had a dream that his mother was dead ; the
dream was most vivid, and in his waking moments the dream kept con-
tinually recurring to him, and he could not shake off the impression of
sadness it brought upon him. The other brothers each slept at different
parts of the garrison, and they only met each other on parade. The
morning following the dream, and after the parade was over, my father
ran hurriedly on to meet his brothers, and as he approached them they
each appeared as anxious to meet him as he was to meet them ; in a tone
of breathless anxiety my father said, ' Oh, William, I have had a queer
dream.' ' So have I,' replied his brother, when, to the astonishment of
both, the other brother, John, said, ' I have had a queer dream, as well. I
dreamt that my mother was dead.' ' So did I,' said each of the other
brothers. It was true that each brother dreamt during the same night
that their mother was dead ; and it is equally true that in the course of a
few days (for the posts then were seldom for such long distances) they
heard from home that during the night of their dream their mother, who
had had no previous illness of which her sons knew anything, had quietly
passed away. « GEORGE EDWIN SWITHINBANK."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Swithinbank adds : —

" I heard it over and over again from my father and the two brothers
concerned."

A sister of Mr. Swithinbank's corroborates as follows : —

" Farnley, near Leeds.

"October 20th, 1883.
" I fully confirm this statement, as the only surviving daughter of the

in.] DREAMS. 383

younger of the three brothers. The last time I saw my uncle William,
shortly before my father's death, he specially named the circumstance to
me, and I had heard it from my early infancy repeatedly from the lips of
my father and his other brothers.

" R. M. HUDSON, (nee Swithinbank)."

§ 2. Next comes a group in which some thought on the part of a
waking agent seems to have been represented in the dream.

The following case strongly recalls No. 149, where the percipient
seemed to catch the idea of a scene about which the agent was
silently reading.

(407) From Miss Julia Wedgwood, 31, Queen Anne Street, W.

"March, 1886.

"My dream was that I was hurrying along the street somehow in
company with a little girl of about 10, who was telling me of her life in
Florence, where she had been brought up. I was listening to her with
great interest, and I remember in my dream being surprised that I could
feel interest in the conversation of a child of that age. One odd thing
was that she was telling me about building, and that we wandered into
some grand new structure, where I had never been before.

" In the morning I took up the novel Marian had been reading before
she went to bed, sitting close to me. I will copy the passages which made
me feel that her interest in the book must somehow have been transferred
to my mind. My building was not a cathedral, and what the child said
about building had the absurdity of a dream, so my dream was not exact.
The little girl in the novel has been brought up in Florence.

" JULIA WEDGWOOD."

The extracts, from a novel called Clarissa's Tangled Web, are as
follows : —

"Thus wandering, she passed to the east end of the north aisle, much
secluded from view by the back of the great organ and the pulpit, and so
alone had she felt that she started when she saw a little girl seated on a
stone step, the first of three leading up to an old oaken door filling
a low narrow doorway in the wall. . . . She noticed too that the
little girl looked towards her, and closed her book, and now appeared
rather to invite than to deprecate conversation. So she drew nearer, and
said in the peculiarly pleasant voice which generally prepossessed strangers,
and not seldom drew forth unexpected confidences, ' You enjoy, my dear,
being in this cathedral ? ' Irene rose. ' Yes, ma'am,' she said, ' I do. I have
seen many much finer cathedrals and churches [having been brought up
in Florence], but this is a good building in many respects, and I do like
being here very much.'

" Mrs. Weatherill felt rather amused by the air of experienced judg-
ment and critical discernment assumed by this very young connoisseur ;
but she said pleasantly, ' You know the building much more familiarly than
I do, I have no doubt.' ' I have read about it, ma'am, and have observed
for myself,' Irene said, quite willing to impart information and give her
own impressions. ' You see the vaulting of the roof, how it is filled in

384 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

and held up by those arches, so many intersections and changing lines —
that is quite a unique arrangement, but / think it is beautiful ! And then,
ma'am, . . . you see that the height of the vaulting in the two side
aisles and the middle aisle is exactly the same," &c.

In reply to inquiries, Miss Wedgwood says :-

! I am quite sure that Marian Hughes read not a word aloud, and did
not mention to me any of the circumstances which reproduced themselves
with the grotesque triviality of such things in my dream, and that I did
not know anything of the contents of the book.

" It was one of a number sent me to review (I leave it with you, with
the relevant passages marked), and Marian being very unwell, I advised
her to look through the heap instead of doing anything else. She sat by
me all the evening reading this novel. I was busy with something else,
and we hardly exchanged a word. We went to bed at the same time,
and I had a vivid dream of meeting two children in the street (there is
only one in the book), and getting into a conversation with the girl about
building. The only sentence which remains with me is the absurd one,
' What ! don't you know that all the heart of oak used in England comes
from Florence 1 ' where she told me she had lived all her life. I had a
vivid sense in my dream of the intelligence and rare knowledge of the
little girl, and when I opened the book at p. 38 it came to me with an
almost startling sense of familiarity. I think I mentioned that I was
wandering with my little girl in a curious new building, and noticed the
ceiling, but it was not a cathedral, so that again was only partly like, but
it was, I remember, a curiously low roof. There was a sense of rather
dramatic interest in the little girl which the story reproduces, and which
is very rare in dreams, but I can remember no words to help it out. I
think the child was 10, but the sense of premature cleverness and of
surprise at myself in being interested in a child's talk about buildings is
what remains with me."

Miss Wedgwood adds : —

" The dream corresponded with her [Marian's] inaccurate recollection
of the fiction more than with the fiction itself. She fancied that the
incident was supposed to occur as in my dream — a grown person walking
with a little girl in the street. It is one of several faint coincidences of
the same kind, but most are so uninteresting that we forget them.

" Another little case of thought-reading between us may have interest
for you. I should premise that M. H. is my most intimate friend as well
as my maid — copies all my writings for me, and shares all my interests.

"In the year 1880, I was troubled by some circumstances which I
carefully concealed from her. I thought that some actions of mine might
have caused annoyance to a friend long dead, if he had been still among
us, and the doubt stirred up much speculation in my mind as to the
possible feeling in those who are gone. On the morning after I had been
dwelling on this (which I did with a sense of vivid anxiety), M. H. said
to me, ' Oh, I had such a strange dream last night. I thought I saw
Mr. A. come alive in his picture in the wall, and stand out of the picture,
and look down with sorrow and grief, as if he were much hurt ! ' I felt
she had exactly read my anxious feelings, all sign of which had been

in.] DREAMS. 385

carefully concealed from her. She had never seen the picture which was
very familiar to me."

(408) From Mrs. Hunter, 2, Victoria Crescent, St. Helier's, Jersey.

"January 8th, 1884.

"The following happened in India some 13 years ago. My second
daughter had been with me, while I was preparing for bed one night. Our
talk was merry, and only gossip. At last she left me for her own room.
In the middle of the night I awoke in an agony of grief, and sat up in bed,
sobbing and trembling. In vain I reasoned and tried to believe ' it was
only a dream.' For a time I could not ; it was so real. My dream was
that a cobra di capello had bitten my daughter, and she raised a blanched,
pinched face to mine, and said, ' Must I die, mamma ? ' and I had replied,
in agony, ' You must, darling.'

" Next morning, my dream hardly remembered, I was dressing, when
she, as usual, came to me. Her first words were, ' Oh, mamma, I had
such a horrid feeling last night while I was undressing. I felt sure there
was a snake in my room, and had such a hunt before I got into bed ;
indeed, I feel sure the wretch is there still, and I have ordered the hammal
(male housemaid) to turn my bathroom upside down. It was a horrid
feeling.'

" No snake was ever seen in her room.

" Even in those days, before one had heard of thought-transference, I
explained it to myself in some such way, viz., that her waking terror had
communicated itself to me in sleep, and caused my dream.

"H. E. HUNTER."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Hunter adds : —

" No, we never had dreams nor apprehensions, nor talks about snakes.
At hill stations, where they may be seen, we have, of course, talked of
them (glad to have any subject for talk !), but at the time of my dream we
were living in a large house close to the sea, and where snakes were almost
unknown. As to the seeming discrepancy in time, it can be removed in
this way. / got into bed directly she left me, and in India, when in
health, I generally went to sleep at once. SJie was given to sit up reading,
and it was while undressing the panic began ; then followed the hunt, and
we may feel sure that even after she got into bed sleep might not come all
at once. My feeling when I awoke was as if it were the middle of the
night, but it might really have been only an hour or two. I never looked
at the time."

[We of course cannot assume that the coincidence was exact.]

(409) From Mrs. Sibley, 6, Radipole Road, Fulham, S.W.

"January 26th, 1884.

"The following occurred about May, 1859. I believed my son to be
away in the Mediterranean, and I had no reason to believe he would come
home for a year or two, when one night I dreamt that I had a letter, and ,
all that was written on it and inside it was ' Woolwich,' ' Woolwich,'
' Woolwich.' I awoke with the belief that I must be going to hear from
him ; it was then about 6.30. I could not sleep any more, and when I
heard the postman's knock at the door, I sent immediately for the letters.
Only one was brought to me, and that had for its postmark ' Woolwich

VOL. II. 2 C

386 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Dockyard,' and it was from my son, telling me of the safe arrival, the
night before, of the ship he was on. My son was in the navy, and I am
perfectly certain that the idea of his speedy return had never crossed my
mind ; for aught I knew he might be several years away. This dream is
unique in my experience, in the strength of the conviction it produced that
it must correspond with reality.

" I mentioned this dream immediately on waking to a daughter (since
deceased), who was sleeping with me. « KATHERINE SIBLET."

The following corroboration is from the wife of the present writer, a
younger daughter of Mrs. Sibley's : —

" 26, Montpelier Square, S.W.

"Jan. 26, 1884.

" I remember the news of this incident spreading through the house
before breakfast, and our rushing to my mother's room — when we were
shown the letter, and told the dream.

"KATE S. GURNEY."

(410) From Mr. E. C. Trevilian, 3, Petersham Terrace, S.W.

"February 2nd, 1884.

"The following occurrence took place some 12 or 14 years ago. I
was unmarried, and my house in Somerset had no establishment in it —
merely an old housekeeper and a maid-servant. I lived more than half
the year in chambers in London, and when I went alone down to the
country, I never gave notice of my coming.

"On the day in question I walked up from the station, leaving my
luggage to follow, and rang — as usual — at the side door. The maid-
servant unlocked and opened it, paused a moment while a look of terror
came over her face, and fled in much confusion. I walked in slowly, and
instead of turning towards my study, marched straight to the servants'
hall. The old housekeeper was by the fire, and as I approached her,
walking up one side of the long table, she rushed down the other, and out
of the room. I retreated to my study, and in about half an hour rang
the bell. The old woman was still a little shaky, but was able to explain
that the two had so entirely made up their minds that I was dead, that on
my appearance just now they had taken me for my ghost. The maid-
servant had dreamed, some 10 days before, that I was out shooting, that
my gun had burst, and that I had been killed on the spot. They had
mentioned this to several people — among them to the clergyman and to
my agent — but without producing much effect. The girl had been so
positive, that she, the old woman, had come to feel equally sure of my
death.

" Now on the day of the dream it is a fact that my gun had burst —
that is, it had gone in two at the breach, and no harm had been done. It
was at a country house in Oxfordshire, and I was using sawdust powder,
then a new invention, and several accidents had occurred with it about
that time, and some had been mentioned in the newspapers. This, how-
ever, I well recollect. My host and I, then and there, standing among the
beaters, decided that the accident should not be mentioned, and we looked
regularly and found no notice of it in the local or London papers ; nor

in.] DREAMS. 387

could I find out that any mention of it had been seen in any of the
Somerset local papers, though it was chiefly by inquiry and not by myself
examining the files that I went to work.

" I have quite lost sight of the servant-maid — the old woman was still
in existence in the neighbourhood some months ago.

" E. C. TREVILIAN."

(411) From Miss Augusta Gould (now Mrs. Temple, and resident in
India).

" Sunny bank, Baling Dean, W.

"December 19th, 1883.

" When my brother was in Glasgow, I told his son I had had a curious
dream of an unwieldy chair coming to me as a present from his
father. As I was only residing in his house, I had no idea or need of
receiving a chair.

"The next post brought me a letter from him, saying he had bought
me such a curious American revolving chair, which was unwieldy when it
came, the heavy pedestal and legs giving us difficulty in moving it from
one place to another.

" I have had other curious unexpected events occur after dreams
foreshadowing them, but will not burden you with more particulars.
Surely the affair of the chair was a curious case of rapport between my
brother's spirit and mine. As he never retired to rest till very late, and
then was sleepless, he might have been thinking of his present to me when
I was dreaming of it. « AUGUSTA GOULD."

In answer to inquiries, Miss Gould added : —

" I send my nephew's corroboration of the dream as to the chair. I
may mention that my nephew is 26 years old and clear in memory usually,
but he forgets that my brother was in Glasgow at the time. As to one
of your questions, I dream always in sleep, either by day or night. When-
ever I wake a dream is broken into ; so I often dream things which do
not come to pass, though often a foreshadowing of events does come to be
realised."

The following is from a postcard written to Miss Gould by her
nephew, from 6, Ellison Place, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and forwarded to us : —

"January 2, 1884.

" I remember perfectly about the chair ; it was one time when my
father was south that you had the dream, and when he came back he
brought the chair with him. I have told several people about the circum-
stance.— ALEX. G."

Where the subject of the dream is as odd and unlikely as in this
case and the next, its triviality can scarcely be held to diminish the
force of the coincidence.

j

(412) From a letter written on June 27, 1875, by Mr. J. L. O'Sullivan,
then United States Minister at Lisbon, to the late Serjeant Cox, as
President of the Psychological Society, and handed to us by Mr. F. K.
Munton, who was Secretary of that Society.

Mr. O'Sullivan was engaged to dine, one evening in 1858, with his
VOL. II. 2 c 2

388 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

British colleague, Mr. (now Sir Henry) Howard. By an accident, he was
obliged to present himself in a pair of wet, muddy, and broken boots, which
he sedulously kept concealed during the evening, taking care to arrive after
the dinner had begun, and to play cards afterwards, instead of resorting
to the drawing-room.

" The next morning I went as usual to the bedside of my invalid
mother, who for years had not been able even to turn over in bed. After
a little while she said, ' My son, I had such a queer dream about you
last night. I saw you at Mrs. Howard's party, and you were in such a
comical but annoying predicament. I thought you had on a pair of wet
and muddy and broken boots, and you were keeping your feet hidden under
the table.' And she laughed over the recollection of such an absurd dream.

" I ascertained that my servant had not become afterwards conscious
of his omission, and that no human being under my roof knew that night
of what had indeed been my queer predicament."

(413) From Mrs. Barr, Apsley Town, East Grinstead.

"Dec. 11, 1883.

" When in England some years ago, I had a very bad cough, for which
a blister was ordered by my medical man, but being improperly applied it
left a very ugly mark, like the print of a horse's shoe. I was then prepar-
ing to rejoin my husband [the late General Barr] in India, and carefully
avoided mentioning the circumstance to him.

" On my way out to Bombay I was- taken seriously ill, and was so
weak on my arrival that I had to be carried on shore. As our own house
was some miles from the place of landing we rested half way at my father-
in-law's house. Whilst there my husband's mother said to him, ' Does
Lizzie look at all as you saw her in your dream 1 ' Upon which my husband
turned to me and said, ' I had such a horrid dream about you the other
night. I saw you looking pale and ill, as you do now, but you had a
dreadful mark like a horse shoe upon your chest.' Being ill, I had landed
in a white muslin dressing-gown, and I slightly parted it in front and
showed him the mark. He was much astonished and said, ' How did you
get that ? It is exactly the mark I saw in my dream.'

" ELIZABETH H. A. BARR."

(414) From a narrator, Mr. B., whose name and address (though he
made no stipulation on the subject) it seems right to suppress.

"January 16th, 1885.

"In March, 1880, our servant A. had been with us a few months,
was well recommended by people we knew, and for the time she had
been with us proved trustworthy, and as good as we could expect a
servant to be. The dream Mrs. B. had respecting her happened in the
early morning. She dreamt that the maid came into the dining-room, sat
down by her (a strange proceeding), and said she had something on her
mind to tell her mistress. It was that she had a boy of three years old,
whose name was Bertie. When Mrs. B. got up, which she did after
breakfasting in bed as usual, she went out into the orchard where A.
was hanging the clothes. Mrs. B. told her her dream, and A. made na
reply, but looked very pale and peculiar. Mrs. B. left her under the
impression that she had offended her. Some time after, Mrs. B. found

ni.J DREAMS. 389

A. in the kitchen, crying bitterly. On inquiring what was the matter,
whether she was offended, she replied, ' Oh, no ! ma'am, your dream is quite
true in all respects, even the name.'

" It seems that A. had had it on her mind to tell Mrs. B. about
this child from the first, and her mother had pressed her to tell Mrs. B.
about it. Mrs. B. says she had not the least suspicion of this matter,
not even after the dream.

" The servant A. and her mistress had a great liking for each other,
more than is usual with servant and mistress, and A. had never been so
happy in a situation before.

" A.'s age at the time was 23 years.

" [A year subsequently,] when in London, visiting her relatives, Mrs.

B. dreamed that her servant, A., whom she had left at home, was in
dreadful trouble — could see her in tears ; all night Mrs. B. was continually
dreaming of her. Next morning Mrs. B. determined upon returning home,
although it was arranged for a longer stay. On her arrival, A. opened the
door, and at once burst into a paroxysm of grief, saying that ' Bertie was
dying,' that she had been praying for him and for Mrs. B.'s return, and
crying all the previous night, and wished to go to him at once. (It should
have been mentioned that the child, Bertie, was living with A.'s mother.)

" Mrs. B. is not remarkable for many dreams."

Mrs. B. writes : —

" I certify that the foregoing statement is quite correct.

" ELLEN B."

In answer to inquiries as to the first dream, Mr. B. says that his wife
did not mention it to him till some time afterwards, but then could refrain
no longer. In conversation Mrs. B. told me that she was quite confident
that the detail of the name occurred in the dream, and was not subse-
quently read back into it ; and also that she had had no idea whatever of
A.'s history. The dreams were exceptionally vivid in detail.

(415) From Miss A. J. Middleton, 20, Stanley Gardens, Kensington
Park Road, W.

" 1884.

" Some years ago, I was staying with friends, and came down one day,
saying I had had such a dreadful dream, that my youngest brother was
drowned ; the impression was so vivid I could not forget it. When the
second post letters came, at about 2.30, I heard that a man who was boat-
ing with this brother had slipped getting into the boat, and was drowned,
and -my brother was in great distress about it ; the man I never saw, and
did not know his name. When I read the letter, my friends said, ' How
odd that you should have dreamed your brother was drowned ; we should
have said you had made it up had you not told us first.'

" A. J. MIDDLETON."

In answer to inquiries, Miss Middleton adds : —

" I send you the card to-day I received from my friend confirming my
first dream. I fancy I stayed with them about a week. This is the only
occasion on which I have had a very distressing dream of death which
left a vivid and lasting impression."

The card is as follows : —

390 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" Kirkbright Vicarage.

" March, 1884.

" Yes, I quite well remember your telling us about your dream, and
your hearing the news the next morning. Thanks to our visitors' list I can
tell you the date of your coming to us, January 21st, 1881.

" M. COPE."*

The dream in this case, if telepathic, was probably due to the idea
in the brother's mind. The next case might be explained in a similar
way, by reference to what was filling the minds of those who
surrounded the percipient ; but it might also be regarded as a case
of direct impression from the drowning man ; and the mis-recognition
would then be very similar to what has been observed in other
examples (Nos. 170, 171, 249, and cf. 455 below). The case may
further illustrate that development of the percipient faculty in
illness, which was noticed in the preceding chapter (p. 349).

(416) Prom Miss Copeman, St. Stephen's House, Norwich.

" March 2nd, 1884.

" My mother nursed my grandmother all through her last illness, and
a few days before she died they received the intelligence of the sudden
death by drowning of the eldest son of the family. It was not
referred to in the presence of my grandmother, but that day or the
next, awaking from a sleep, she said, ' I have just seen John in the
water ; has anything happened to him 1 ' Joseph was the name of the one
drowned, and they were able to say that John, another son, was quite
well, and she was quieted. It was thought she meant Joseph at the time,
but in her feebleness did not remember the right name. She died a day
or two after.

" I have often heard my mother repeat this, as a remarkable coinci-
dence not to be explained."

In answer to inquiries, Miss Copeman writes : —

" May 13th, 1884.

" I fear I cannot give all the particulars you wish to have ; the coinci-
dence is one not easy to relate clearly, for no one is living now who
remembers anything definite about it. I only know of it as I heard
it from my own mother's lips, and it is 3 years since her death.
I have ascertained from another member of my family that the two
deaths occurred in the year 1844, with an interval of about a week
between them. My grandmother's name was Mrs. Elizabeth Buck,
of East Dereham, Norfolk.

" My father and sister confirm my statement, as they, too, have more
than once heard my mother speak of it. c< LUCY A COPEMAN "

1 We have received a parallel case to this from Miss M. J. Potter, of 42, Northumber-
land Avenue, Kingstown, who tells us that in 1860 she dreamt very vividly that a cousin
was drowned in a deep pond, on the night after the drowning in a mill-pond of another
cousin who was living in the same house as the one dreamt of. The news of the accident
arrived before Miss Potter left her room next morning, and before she had an opportunity
of mentioning her dream.

in.] . DREAMS. 391

We find from the Register of Deaths that Mr. Joseph Buck was
drowned at Sproughton on the 9th of August, 1844, and that his mother
died on the 17th.

[In cases like this it is impossible to be absolutely certain that the
news did not become known to the sick person through a whisper, or a
reference made to it when she was supposed to be asleep, which may have
acted as the nucleus of a dream.]

It occasionally happens that a scene seems to have been telepathi-
cally represented at a time when it was not occupying the agent's
senses, though it may have been consciously occupying his mind (cf.
Miss Wilkinson's case below, Chap. IV., § 2).

(417) From the Rev. W. Champneys, Haslingden Vicarage, Man-
chester.1

"September 3rd, 1884.

" The incident to which I imagine you allude happened to my father,
the late Dean of Lichfield. I have often heard him tell the story.

" One of his brothers was secretary of the Church Pastoral Aid Society,
and in that capacity was often travelling about the country, preaching
sermons and attending meetings. He was in precarious health, having
once had rheumatic fever, which had left behind it heart-complaint. One
night my father dreamed that he was walking through the street of a
village where he had never been before. The whole scene was entirely
new, and impressed itself strongly on his memory. Coming to the village
inn, he walked up to the door to inquire after his brother, who had started
off on one of his journeys a few days before, in his usual health. The land-
lady, of whom he made the inquiry, returned an evasive answer, and then
he asked if his brother's wife was there : to which she replied, ' Not his
wife, sir, but his widow : ' and with the shock of these words he awoke.

" As soon as a message could reach him the next day (it was before the
days of telegraphs), he heard that his brother had been taken ill on his
journey the day before ; that trying to reach the town, where he was ex-
pected, they had been obliged to put up at a village inn on the way, and
that there, after a very short illness, he had died ; and when my father went
to the place that day, which was one he had never been to before, or even
heard of, the whole scene was exactly the same that had been before him
in his dream — street, houses, country, everything was the same, and at the
very inn where he dreamed he had inquired for his brother, he found his
brother's body lying. « WELDON CHAMPNEYS."

Through the kindness of the Secretary of the Church Pastoral Aid
Society, we have been able to ascertain that the death of the Rev. E. T.
Champneys occurred on June 16, 1845, at Caxton.

[The essential point of such a narrative as this is of course inde^1
pendent of the alleged correspondence of detail, which is likely to seem
in memory more exact than it really was.]

1 A not quite correct version of this narrative, without names, is given by the Rev. J.
S. Pollock. .Incumbent of St. Alban the Martyr, Birmingham, in Dead and Gone, p. 30.

392 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

The next case may possibly be of the same kind; but we have no
proof that the scene was more than an imaginary setting supplied by
the dreamer (as in several of the cases in § 4 below). The percipient
did not himself believe that he had been asleep; but without external
evidence that he was awake, we can hardly regard otherwise than as
a dream an experience in which he appears to himself to be acting a
part, during a time much longer than the actual duration of the
impression.

(418) From Mr. Adrian Stokes, M.R.C.S., 16, Howell Road, St.
Davids, Exeter. The account was originally published in the Spiritual
Magazine, in December, 1867.

" My uncle, the late Adrian Stokes, Esq., of Thornbury, near Bristol,
was living at his villa in that little town, in the year 1842, and on the
evening of a certain day in November had retired to bed, in his usual
health, at his customary hour. Contrary to his habit, however, he could
not sleep, but lay awake counting the hours until 3 o'clock in the morning,
when suddenly he found himself in a country whose features were quite
strange to him. He became aware that he was in the Neilgherrie hill
country of India, where his brother Sam was on invalid furlough. It
appeared to him that he remained three months there with Sam, that he
attended him during his illness, and that finally Sam died, when the vision
faded, and he found himself again in his bed.1 He was now satisfied
that this vision had revealed a certainty to him, turned round and fell
asleep, and in the morning he told my aunt all about it. He has mentioned
this matter to me several times, and always expressed his belief that he
was broad awake while he saw the vision, which he thought must have
passed with the rapidity of ' thought/ and was quite sure it was no
dream.

" In due course my uncle received from his brother's agents at Madras
a letter containing information of Sam's death at such and such a place
in the Neilgherrie Hills, at the precise day and hour that my uncle saw
the vision in his bed at Thornbury. ' It was no news to me,' said my uncle
to me when telling me of the circumstance ; ' I knew poor Sam was gone
several months before.'

" ADRIAN STOKES."

We find from the Indian Service Register that the death took place
on November 12th, 1843 (not 1842), at Ootacamund.

In answer to a question, Mr. Stokes tells us that he was not told of
this vision till several years after its occurrence.

The following example might be referred to the same type, if we

1 We have a similar case — first-hand, but remote and from an uneducated witness —
where the dreamer saw her brother, a carpenter's mate, fall from a yard and break his
leg, and then nursed him till his death. She says that she marked the day, as it happened
to be his birthday, and afterwards learnt from one of his shipmates that he had died on
the date of her dream, having broken his leg by a fall three days previously.

in.] DREAMS. 393

could be quite sure that the details following the accident really
figured in the dream ; but they may easily have been " read back "
into it ; and the case is again second-hand and remote.

(419) From Mr. A. W. Orr, Kingston Road, Didsbury, near Man-
chester.

"January 2nd, 1885.

" Some 40 years ago, my father was house-surgeon at the City of
Dublin Hospital, and one day a young man, a sailor, was brought in who
had fallen from one of the yards of the vessel on which he served. He
was badly injured, and in about three days he died. Late in the afternoon
of the day on which the man died, an old woman, very poor and fagged,
came up to the hospital and asked to see the surgeon. My father saw her,
and inquired what he could do for her ; when she inquired whether a
young sailor had been brought to that institution, and if so, could she see
him 1 My father told her of the man above mentioned, and that he had
died that morning.

" It turned out that the old woman was the young man's mother,
that she lived in the Co. Carlow, and that three nights previously she
had dreamt that her son had fallen from the rigging of the vessel, and had
been taken to an hospital. So vivid was the dream that she could not
rest till she got to Dublin (where she had never been before), and the
moment she saw the hospital, she recognised it as the building she had
seen in her dream. Her dream was only too true, for she found that her
son had died from the effects of injuries occasioned by a fall just as
appeared in her dream.

" The old woman had walked a distance of over 60 miles, and entered
the city by the road which passed the front of the hospital.

" A. W. ORE."

In a second letter Mr. Orr says : —

" You may rely upon the facts being as I have stated them, as I have
frequently spoken to my father on the subject, the case being of such a
very remarkable character."

§ 3. These last cases form a transition to the next class, which is
distinguished by the direct correspondence of the dream with a real
event that befell the agent ; but many of the dreams may still, as
before, be regarded as literal representations of the agent's thought.
The prominent event, as usual, is death.

(420) The Rev. W. B. B. having communicated to me the fact
that some time ago, he had had an exceptionally vivid dream — which
haunted him for a portion of two days — of the death of an acquaintance,
and that the death had happened coincidently with the dream, the*
usual questions were asked. He replied as follows : —

" The Vicarage, .

"December 9th, 1884.
" In reference to the subject of your note, I am able to say that I had

394 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

no means of knowing that the lady in question was ailing or even in
delicate health. She was the wife of a cousin from whom or of whom I
do not think I had heard for some months. I have so much to do in my
parish that I have little time for correspondence, but in consequence of
what I dreamed I at once wrote to the son of the lady referred to, having
previously, on awaking, mentioned the matter to my own wife. My
remark to her was, ' We shall hear some bad news, I fear, from R —
(the residence of my cousin), and I then repeated the dream. Within
another post I heard that Mrs. B. had died on that night" [The narrator
goes on to say that a very near relative of his had three times had exactly
similar intimations. See p. 132, note.]

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death occurred on
Sept. 2, 1866.

The following is the corroboration of the narrator's wife : —

"December llth, 1884.

" Mrs. B. has much pleasure in confirming the statement made by her
husband as to his having communicated to her the substance of his dream
boding something very serious to his cousin's family. We had had no
intimation of the illness. The family lives in Ireland, and the news of
the death did not reach us until two days after."

[The slight discrepancy as to when the news arrived does not seem
important. It will be seen that the dream was impressive enough to
cause a busy man to write a letter.]

(421) From Miss C. D. Garnett, Furze Hill Lodge, Brighton.

"December 18th, 1883.

" On the 13th of February, 1883, when at Biarritz, I dreamt that a
relative, whom we had left in perfect health in England, and between
whom and myself there was a strong affinity, was dying, and that we had
to leave Biarritz sooner than we intended. The dream haunted me
throughout the following morning, and in the evening we received a tele-
gram summoning us home at once. She died as we reached England. I
may mention that this event was entirely unlooked for.

"C. D. GARNETT."

We find from the Liverpool Daily Post that the death occurred on
Feb. 15, 1883.

Miss Garnett adds : —

"March 3rd, 1885.

" In reply to your questions respecting the dream I had at Biarritz :
1 . What was the state of the dying person at the time of the dream ? — She
was unconscious.1 2. What was the character of the dream 1 — I dreamt
that we were summoned home suddenly (we had then been a week in
Biarritz, and intended remaining two months), that we received a telegram
announcing the sad state of my relative ; and the dream was all concerning
her — and a very troublesome one. It wasn't an ordinary dream. I felt
greatly disturbed throughout the day following, and in the evening, about
dinner time, the telegram came."

1 See Chap, v., § 10, and Vol. i., p. 563, note.

in.] DREAMS. 395

Miss M. Garnett writes, on December 30, 1883 : —

" I understand from my sister that you desire a corroboration of her
remarkable dream at Biarritz. She mentioned it to me the following
morning. She was much attached to the relative dreamt of.

" MILLICENT GARNET?."

(422) From Colonel V., who says that the case " was written from
memory, and dates in my diary."

" March llth, 1886.

" On Sunday night, 25th May, 1884, I had a most extraordinary
dream. I dreamt that my son A., a young officer in a regiment at
Gibraltar, was lying very ill there with fever, and was calling out to me,
' Father, father, come over and let me see you or my mother.' The next
morning I went to see the Rev. G., the well-known coach, living near me.
On entering his room, he exclaimed, ' Do you believe in " dream-waves " V
I replied, No, I did not. He remarked that just as I was entering the
room, ne was on the point of sitting down before his desk and commencing
a letter to me, asking me to come over and see him. I then said, ' I had a
curious dream last night. I saw before me my son A. down with fever at
Gibraltar, imploring me to come over and see him.' As I had that morning
a letter from him, written in good spirits, I thought it curious, and gave
the dream no further thought.

" On Tuesday, the 27th May, I went to Ramsgate with my second son,
for change. On the 29th May, one of my family here wired to me to
return home, as news had arrived from Gibraltar that my son A. was very
ill with Rock fever. I returned in a few hours. I read over my letters
from Gibraltar. It appears that on the 17th May my son fell ill, and was
placed on the sick list. The attack turned out to be Rock fever. He
gradually got worse ; on the 24th he was delirious, and on the 25th his
brother officers had to get a nurse, Mrs. S., to take charge of the patient.
On the 23rd a second doctor was called in consultation. So bad was the
news that I received from Gibraltar by letter and telegrams, that I left
London on the 4th June, and reached it on the 9th. I found the
patient doing well, but very weak. I had to remain there till the
3rd July, the attack of fever continuing, and we both returned home on
the 8th July.

" I mentioned to the nurse my curious dream of the 25th May. She
said she was placed in charge of the patient on the afternoon of that day.
He was very delirious all that night, and was constantly calling out, ' Oh,
mother, mother, do come over to see me ' ; and as he probably remembered
how delicate she was, and that she could not take a sea voyage across the
Bay of Biscay, he also called out, ' Father, father, come and comfort me,
and let me see you again.'

" It was months after our return home before the fever left him, and
he did not quite get rid of it till November, 1884." .

In conversation, Colonel V. informed me that he dreams very little,
and scarcely ever has distressing dreams ; and that, quite apart from the
confirmation, this dream would have been very exceptional in its character.
Mrs. S., who was an excellent nurse, and whom he regards as entirely
trustworthy, has left Gibraltar, and gone, he thinks, to Morocco.

396 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

The Rev. H. P. Gurney, to whom Colonel V. described his dream next
morning, writes from 2, Powis Square, W., on March 22, 1886 : —

" I do not remember any particulars of Colonel V.'s dream. It
occurred nearly two years ago, and at a time when I am particularly busy.
I only recollect that he told me that he had had a curious dream about his
son at Gibraltar, who is one of our former pupils. I cannot recall any
particulars, but I think that his son called to him to come and visit him.
I know that he afterwards found out that he was seriously ill with fever,
and had to go out to bring him home.

" H. P. GURNEY."

Mrs. Thrupp, of 67, Kensington Gardens Square, W., writing to us on
April 2nd, 1886, says that she called at Colonel V.'s house when he was
on the point of starting for Gibraltar to see his son, and that he then told
her " all about his dream."

(423) From Mrs. S. (the narrator of case 74), who is willing that her
name should be given to any one genuinely interested in this case.

" October 27th, 1885.

"In 1871, I was staying at Diisseldorf with my daughter, who had
just been to an eminent doctor in Bonn to have an operation performed on
the throat. My mother-in-law was also in Bonn, and, after the operation,
had run after the cab containing my daughter and myself, and had given
the former (who was a child at the time) a ten-thaler note, as a reward for
the brave manner in which she had submitted to the operation. She was
in excellent spirits, and laughed and joked with us before parting. A day
or two afterwards I awoke, and said to my daughter, who slept in the same

room, ' 0 M , I have had such a dreadful dream. I dreamt your

grandmother was dead? The terror caused by the dream was so great that
I felt compelled to wake my daughter, though I knew that in her con-
dition this was most unwise, as she was still suffering from the effects
of the operation. I felt I must tell someone. My daughter said it was
' only a dream,' and told me to go to sleep. I asked how her throat was,
and she said it was better. I pulled out my watch from under the pillow,
and found it was between 3 and 4 a.m.

" The following morning, at 10 o'clock, I received a telegram, telling
me to meet my mother-in-law's sister at Cologne Station. I did so, and
they broke to me the news of my mother-in-law's death, which had taken
place the previous night. I had been in no sort of anxiety about her,
and I was only told afterwards that she had been suffering for many
years from some internal complaint, for which she had been operated on
on the day following that on which I last saw her. I was totally ignorant
that this was going to be done.

" This was the only occasion on which I remember having had a vivid
and distressing dream of death. (( -** &»

[Mrs. S.'s daughter " thinks her testimony would be of little use, as she
was quite young at the time, and her memory is not quite clear on several
points."]

(424) A lady who prefers that her name should not be published,
having been asked (by Miss Bryce, of 35, Bryanston Square, W.) whether

in.] DREAMS. 397

since January 1st, 1874, she had had an exceptionally vivid dream of
the death of some person known to her, answered : — u , ,,,, .

"Yes, on August 13th, 1877. I was 27, and in excellent health, as
I was on my way home from a month's stay in Switzerland. The impres-
sion lasted for some hours after I rose. In the night it was so distressing
as to wake me. The person of whose death I dreamt was my oldest and
dearly-beloved brother, a young man of 26. He died at Blackheath just
at the same time, i.e., between 12 and 3 in the early morning. I had
heard the day before that he was unwell, but no fatal consequences were
thought of." "

In answer to further inquiries, our informant writes on May 17, 1884 : —

" My brother was a young man of fine physical frame, in vigorous
health, going daily to the City from his home with my parents at Black-
heath. He had, however, a constitutional weakness in the ' haemorrhagic
diathesis,' which was not appreciated by me as in the least likely to
shorten his life.

" At the time in question he had taken a fortnight's holiday at
Maidenhead, chiefly spent in rowing, at which he was an adept. After
his return he fainted, one morning, and a bruise was found on his left
shoulder. The letter that I received told me of this, adding that the
doctor had seen him, that some anxiety had been excited, but that he was
better.

" Had there been any apprehension of fatal consequences, or even of a
serious illness, I should have left Boulogne on the day I received the news
(Sunday). But I remained there with my husband, and, as I said, in the
night between Sunday and Monday, I had the terrible impression — the
chill horror of which I cannot forget.

" On reaching London in the afternoon of the next day (Monday), I
learnt that he had died suddenly at the time of my distress ; the cause
being internal haemorrhage from the lacerated muscle. He had never had
internal haemorrhage before. He had only been unwell three or four days."

We have verified the date of the death in the Times obituary.

[Mrs. W.'s husband prefers not to state positively whether it was
after or before the news of the death that he first heard of the dream.
On the supposition that latent anxiety may possibly have been the
source of the dream, the case is excluded from the group used in the
calculation in Vol. I., Chap. VIII., § 4.]

(425) From Mr. T. J. Norris, Dalkey, Ireland. The account was
written many years ago.

"In the year 1839, Mrs. Norris, of Mohill, Co. Leitrim, accompanied
by her two daughters (now Mrs. West, the Asylum, Omagh, and Mrs.
Crofton, Portnashangan Rectory, Mullingar) and by Mrs. Draper (now
Mrs. Simonet, St. Helier's, Jersey),1 went to Lausanne for the benefit
of the health of one of her girls, and remained there for a couple of
years. Mr. Norris being an extensive land agent, could not remain with
them, but paid them a visit each summer. While there in 1840, and just
before the day fixed for his return home, Mrs. Draper, at breakfast, in

1 Since deceased.

398 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

formed all present that a Mrs. Wilson, of St. Heller's, a friend of them
all, had died the evening before, at such an hour and under such-and-such
circumstances, and asked Mr. Norris to write to Jersey about it. He first
entered all the circumstances minutely in his pocket-book, and then wrote
over as requested, desiring the answer to be directed to him in Mohill, to
which he was about to return. I, his only son, was with him one day,
when the post came in, bringing him a letter from Jersey. He opened
and read it, and then gave me his keys and desired me to bring him down
his pocket-book, to open it at a certain date, and see how far his memo-
randum agreed with the information contained in the letter. In substance
they were identical, except that it appeared that Mrs. Wilson did not die
until more than half-an-hour after her appearance to Mrs. Draper. I
suggested that this could be accounted for by the difference of longitude,
and on calculating this it just made up for the seeming discrepancy.

"THOMAS J. NORRIS."

Mrs. West, of Sion Cottage, Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone, writes : —

" December 7th, 1882.

" I am not sure whether it was a dream or that Mrs. Draper thought
she saw Mrs. Wilson ; but if the former, Mrs. Draper must have awoke
at once, as I know she looked at her watch and remarked the hour, and
afterwards, when she heard of Mrs. Wilson's death, she inquired par-
ticularly at what hour she died. We at first thought the time was
different, till we calculated the difference of Lausanne and Jersey time.

"A. M. WEST."

Mr. Norris has given us his reasons for fixing the year as 1840; but
we cannot find the death in the Jersey Register for that year. Registra-
tion had been then only recently introduced, and had perhaps not become
universal.

[This case is very remote ; but the incident which Mr. Norris relates
was such as would be likely to impress the facts on his memory, at any
rate to a greater extent than if he had merely been told the story.]

(426) From Miss Churchill, 9, Eversley Park, Chester.

"August 13th, 1884.

[A few words are added from a second account written on November
18th, 1885.]

"About the month of August, 1877, I dreamt most vividly of the
death of a gentleman, a friend of the family, whom I had not seen for
some years. I fancy I saw him in the dream, but cannot distinctly
remember. I had not heard of his illness, or anything of him at the time
of my dream. But the next day I heard of his death having taken place ;
I do not remember the hour, but as far as I can say I believe he must have
been dead at the time of my dream, or dying.

" I cannot positively say whether I mentioned my dream before hearing
of his death ; I think I did. " EMILY CHURCHILL."

In answer to an inquiry, Miss Churchill replies : —

"I do not remember (with this exception) dreaming vividly of a
death, and believe the one referred to to be the only one.

One of Miss Churchill's sisters says : —

" I can perfectly well remember hearing the dream before we heard of

in.] DREAMS. 399

the death. As he was a strong man, and as far as we knew in excellent
health, we did not for a moment suppose it was true. If I remember
rightly, he was only ill three or four hours."

Another sister writes : —

"August, 1884.

" It is so long ago that we have rather forgotten. My own impression
was that Emily told us her dream at breakfast, and that we heard of the
death in the evening, — that the gentleman concerned had died the day
before. I know I was much impressed at the time, but I couldn't declare
that she told us in the morning. I know directly Lizzie told us of the
death (she had not been at home in the morning) Emily exclaimed to her,
' I dreamt last night that he was dead.' "

We find from the Times obituary that the death took place on
July 19th, 1877.

In conversation, Miss Churchill mentioned — as showing how sudden
the death was — that the daughters of the gentleman who died had just
gone on a visit, and had to be telegraphed for. The two families lived
in the same town ; but the interest of the Misses Churchill was in the
daughters ; they rarely saw the father, and had not seen him for a con-
siderable time before his death.

The following is a similar case, where the death of a person not
closely connected with the dreamer was dreamt of vividly, but not in
a specially pictorial way.

(427) From Miss G., whose mother sent us the main facts of the
case in 1883, and who herself wrote a fuller account on January 12, 1886.

In November, 1880, Miss G., the daughter of a country rector,
was staying in her father's former parish in London. The vicar of
this parish had exchanged livings with her father, and was thus
associated in her mind with both her homes, though she only knew him
slightly. One Saturday night she dreamt that he was dead. There was an
odd confusion in the dream, as her father's death was also suggested. She
felt it was something to do with both parishes. On entering the break-
fast-room, she learnt from the friend with whom she was staying that
the vicar had died in the night. She had heard some days before that
he had a cold ; but, as she remarks, " colds in November are anything
but uncommon," and she had thought no more about it. " He had said,
the Thursday before, that he was feeling so much better that he hoped to
be able to take his Sunday duty ; but on the Saturday he had grown
suddenly worse, and died that evening." Miss G. does not remember to
have dreamt of death on any other occasion.

We find from the Times obituary that the death took place on
November 13, 1880.

The friend with whom Miss G. was staying writes to her (in February.,
1886), " I am afraid I do not remember about your dream at the time it
happened ; but I quite well remember your telling me some time after-
wards you had dreamed a dream which I ought to have remembered."
Miss G. is confident that she mentioned the dream before sitting down to
breakfast.

400 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

(428) From a most trusted and valued servant of the present writer's
— now Mrs. Humphry, residing at Hiley Lodge, Kensal Green — who wrote,
in the week following the dream : —

" On Tuesday night [March 24th, 1885], or rather Wednesday morning,
I dreamt that Fenning, a milkman in the employ of Mr. John Jarvis [of
Dale Hill Farm, Ticehurst], formerly in the employ of Mr. Thos. Jarvis,
my late master, said to me, ' He's gone at last.' I said, ' Who ? ' He said,
' Why, Mr. John Jarvis is dead.' On Wednesday morning, when I saw
my fellow-servant, Rose, I told her my dream." [This was confirmed in
writing, at the same time as the account was written, by Rose Wade.]

On March 30th, the news of the death arrived, and Mrs.
Humphry at once mentioned the coincidence to her mistress. She was
told to ask the day and hour of his death, and the following is a copy of
her brother's reply : —

" Platt Cottage, Ticehurst.

"March 31st, 1885.

" Just a line to let you know that Mr. Jarvis passed away on the
25th — that was last Wednesday morning as near as I can tell you
at 2 o'clock. "WILLIAM VIDLER."

We have confirmed the date by the Register of Deaths.

Mrs. Humphry told the present writer that the dream was quite
unique in her experience, for its vividness and the distress that it caused
her.

(429) From Fynes Moryson's Itinerary. (See above, p. 382.)

" Whilst I lived at Prage, and one night had sat up very late drinking
at a feast, early in the morning, the sunne beams glancing on my face as
I lay in bed, I dreamed that a shadow passing by told me that my father
was dead ; at which awaking all in a sweat, and affected with this dreame,
I rose and wrote the day, the houre, and all things connected therewith
in a paper booke, which Booke with many other things I put into a
pouch, and sent it from Prage to Stode, thence to be convoyed into Eng-
land. And now being at Nurnberg, a merchant of a noble family, well
acquainted with me and my friends, arrived there, who told me that my
father died some two months past. I list not write any lies, but that
which I write is as true as strange. When I returned into England some
four years after, I would not open the pouch I sent from Prage, nor looke
in the paper booke in which I had written this dreame, till I had called
my sisters and some friends to be witnesses, when my selfe and they
were astonished to see my written dreame answer the very day of my
father's death."

(430) From the Rev. F. R. Harbaugh (Pastor of Presbyterian
Church), Red Bank, Monmouth County, New Jersey, U.S.A.

"February 7th, 1884.

" In the afternoon of January 29th, 1881, between the hours of 2 and
4 o'clock, while asleep (in ordinary good health), and with no conscious or
immediate procuring cause for the same, I had a ' dream ' charged with
every element of the horrible and distressing. I awoke greatly confused
in mind, but with these very distinct impressions : — first, that some tragedy

in.] DREAMS. 401

had occurred ; and second, that some relative was implicated in it. The
dream, for the while, very greatly affected me, so much so as to seriously
disqualify me for my Sabbath services the day following.

" Within a few days after this dream I received a letter from my
father, which began something like this : —

" ' You will be shocked to hear that your cousin , on last ,

(the same day on which I had my dream), ' took the life of his wife and
babe, and then killed himself.'

"It is not necessary to give the details of the crime. My reply to my
father's letter contained the following : —

" ' Shocked I certainly was by the intelligence in your last letter, but

hardly surprised ; for ever since last afternoon I have been oppressed,

because of a dream, with an impression that something of the kind had
occurred.'

" From his letter in reply, I found that my dream was coincident (how
exactly I do not remember) with the tragedy. With regard to the person
who committed the crime, I had neither seen him nor had any communica-
tion with him, nor, indeed, any information about him, since we separated,
in our early boyhood. No acquaintance of mine of so long a time could
have been more absent from my mind than he. Nothing proximate to the
tragedy had transpired to recall or suggest him. I have never been able
to detect what it was, or might be, that brought him to my knowledge.
The absence of anxiety, or anything like it, may be seen in my almost utter
forgetfulness of him. Indeed, for 20 years I did not know whether he was
living or dead."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Harbaugh says : —

" Horrifying dreams are exceedingly rare with me. The doubt on my
mind as to the coincidence of time (as I now recall the occurrence) is as to
the hour. The day of the tragedy and of my dream were the same." He
adds : —

" A clergyman residing in the place where the crime was committed
writes, ' I am going to see the man who was the first in the house after the
deed was done, and ask him for the exact hour.' Later he writes, ' I
find it was on Saturday evening, January 29th, at just about 7.30 p.m.
The town marshal fixes the time at the same hour.' My recollection of
the day of the week and the time of the day on which I had the dream is
very distinct — as well as the recollection of the letter I received from my
father, telling me of it, and of my reply."

[If this case was telepathic, the idea of the deed must have been
present to the perpetrator's mind 4 hours before it was acted on — which
seems a reasonable supposition. The telepathic explanation is of course
rendered less probable by the absence of intimacy or affection between
the parties ; but we have had indications that mere kinship may supply
the adequate condition (see, e.g., case 244).]

§ 4. Coming now to the class of more distinctly pictorial'
dreams, corresponding with some critical situation of the agent, but
not a mere reflection of his conscious thought, I will begin with cases
where what is seen is a tolerably simple embodiment of the idea

VOL. II. 2 D

402 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

supposed to have been transferred, and then pass on to cases where the
dreamer invests the idea with fresh elements and imagery of his own.
The following four cases are of the simplest possible type. The
first of them resembles the last quoted, in the fact that there was
no bond of friendship between agent and percipient; but the
proximity to the latter of a third person — her father — who was
connected both with her and with the agent, suggests that though the
impression did not affect his consciousness, it still reached her in
some sense through him (p. 267).

(431) From Mr. G. J. Davis, St. Chloe Endowed School, Amberley,
near Stroud. (The account is slightly condensed.)

After mentioning that about 1848, he had served under a certain
clergyman, Mr. S., Mr. Davis continues : —

"About 1860, I married my present wife, and she did not, nor my
children, know anything of Mr. S., and, consequently, took little interest
in hearing about him. We seldom or never spoke about him, except
perhaps when a letter came from him, and I might mention the fact.

" One Saturday morning, as I was reading the Standard after break-
fast, my daughter, aged about 1 9, suddenly broke the silence thus : —

" ' Papa, have you heard from Mr. S. lately 1 '

" ' No, I have not,' I replied ; ' in fact, it is my turn to write. He wrote
about three months ago ; but I have not Written since. Why do you ask 1 '

" ' Because I dreamt about him last night. I dreamt he had lost the
use of his side ' (here she made a motion with her hand down her side) ;
' paralysed, don't you call it ? '

" She spoke very earnestly, I noticed ; but I merely replied, ' How
strange,' and went on reading my Standard. This was on Saturday
morning, you will observe.

" Well, the next day was Sunday, and we always made it a point to
call at the post-office for our letters on Sundays. We did so on this

Sunday. Among them was a C newspaper, I noticed the address

was not in Mr. S.'s handwriting ; this moved my curiosity, and there
being no folk about, I opened the paper, and what was my surprise to find
a paragraph marked, announcing, ' That their respected neighbour, the
Rev. E. H. S., had been seized with paralysis.' Certain persons were
with him — doctors, &c.,— and they hoped he would get better, &c., &c.
Of course, I was very much surprised, and when we got home, I said,
' Sissy, do you remember anything more about your dream ? ' (after read-
ing the paragraph, and saying how strange it was, &c.)

" ' No,' she said, ' but the dream made such an impression upon my
mind that I lay awake thinking about it, and wondering how I knew he
was paralysed, for he didn't tell me, and I saw no one else but himself
lying ill in bed.'

" This is all literally true. " GEORGE JESSON DAVIS."

In reply to an inquiry, Mr. Davis wrote that the date of Mr. S.'s
seizure was Nov. 8, 1878. We have verified the occurrence and
the date in the local newspaper of Nov. 16. It would appear, therefore,
that the dream must have been on the night of Nov. 15 — i.e., a week after

in.] DREAMS. 403

the actual seizure — though while its effects were continuing. This
extension of time of course extends the scope for accidental coincidence,
and so far weakens the case ; on the other hand there is the strong point
of a double correspondence, the right person being associated with the
right complaint, though neither one nor the other had been in the least
degree occupying the dreamer's waking thoughts. Mr. S. never recovered
from the attack, and died some months afterwards.

In conversation Mr. Davis stated that his daughter was not in the
habit of having vivid dreams, and that her mention of this one was
exceptional ; and that by temperament she is the very reverse of gushing
or visionary.

(432) From Mrs. Jennings Bramly, Strathmore, Killiney.

" February 3rd, 1886.

" I am happy to give you an exact account of the dream which I had
about my brother, Professor of Greek in Trinity College, Dublin. I cannot
fix the exact time ; it was probably two and a-half or three and a-half
years ago. It was simply a vivid dream ; I by no means saw an exact enact-
ment of what was going on. I dreamed (being at home in my own house
in Killiney, my brother being in his, in Dublin) that I saw my brother
covered with blood, and that I threw my arms round him and implored
him not to die, and that I felt the blood touch me, and saw it drip on me.
I awoke in great distress, and remained awake lest I should dream it
again. In the morning I told my husband I had had a fearful dream. I
did not in the least think it was true, but it was very real, and it frightened
me. In spite of daylight, and companions around me, I still felt a vague
uneasiness, and in order to dispel the feeling by seeing my brother in
perfect health (as I quite expected I should), I went into Dublin by train,
and to his rooms in College to see him. I found him sitting by the tire, and
I asked him if he would come to us next day and play tennis. He replied,
' that he should not be able to play tennis for many a day,' and then told
me ' he had had an accident the evening before ; he was in the garden
with his children, and one of them had got up on the roof of a small tool-
house, which had a glass window in the roof ; the child was frightened, and
my brother went up the ladder to lift him down ; he put one foot on the
window and reached forward for the child, when the glass broke and my
brother's leg went through, cutting a vein in the leg ; it bled profusely for
a couple of hours before a doctor could be found to bandage it up. This
accident took place early in the evening ; I, probably, was not in bed until
after the bleeding had been stopped.

" My brother noticed how white I had become while he was telling me
of his accident. I told him my dream, and he agreed with me in thinking
it a very remarkable coincidence. He evidently had not thought of me the
previous night, or he would have said so. My attachment for him is, I
believe, unusually strong, and my sympathy in all his pursuits extreme.
It is right to mention that in 1879 he had had a much more serious ^
accident, about which I had no dream. " M. GERALDINE J. BRAMLY."

Mr. Bramly writes on Feb. 3, 1886 : —

" I recollect my wife telling me her dream, as above narrated, on the
following morning. She has a very accurate memory.

Professor Tyrrell writes, on Feb. 5, 1886 :— '* W- J> BKAMLY."
VOL. n. 2 D 2

404 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" I remember the incident communicated to you by my sister, Mrs.
Bramly. The details are accurate. She told me of her dream when she
called on me in College the following morning." Later he adds : —

" I should wish it to be understood that I look on the dream and the
accident as mere coincidence.1 The accident was slight, but there was
considerable effusion of blood. " R. Y. TYRRELL."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Bramly says :

"I am a very restless, uneasy sleeper, and every night dream the
wildest dreams possible. I have never, however, except in this instance,
dreamed of any accident to anyone, or of the death of anyone."

(433) From Mr. Durell, Wrenthorpe, The Thicket, Southsea.

" April 1, 1886.

"On the night of the 4th May, 1863, when I was in Australia, I
dreamed that a postman handed me a letter with a deep black border.
The purport of the letter was to announce the death of an uncle in
England, and that he had left me some property which would necessitate
my immediate return to England.

" When I awoke, the dream still haunted me, and I made a note of it,
and mentioned it to several of my friends, feeling sure I should hear of my
uncle's death.

" I could not do so by the next mail, but the one after that brought
me the intelligence of his death on the 4th of May, the day of my dream,
and he had left me property which required my return to England.

"I had no idea of my uncle's illness, and still less that he was going to
leave me any property. "P. T. D. DURELL."

The Times obituary confirms May 4, 1863, as the date of death.

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Durell writes :

(1) " I do not recollect ever having had a dream about death,
certainly none that ever impressed me as this did ; and I am not in the
habit of having distressing dreams.

(2) " I did make a note at the time of my dream ; unfortunately the
diary I had of that year, 1863, I lost.

(3) " The two friends who were with me at the time of the dream,
and to whom I mentioned it, are both dead."

In conversation, Mr. Durell distinctly confirmed the fact that the
date in the letter was compared with that in his diary, and found to be
the same ; he does not know what was the hour of death. He is not, and
was not, at all in the habit of having vivid dreams : this one made an
extraordinarily strong impression on him before the receipt of the news.
Mrs. Durell well remembers hearing the account very soon after Mr.
Durell's return to England.

(434) From a gentleman, resident at Widnes, who prefers that his full
name should not be published. The account is dated Dec. 12, 1882.

"I was about 14 years old, and at school at Southport, a town about
30 miles from my house. One night I dreamed in a most vivid manner
that I saw my mother dead. Next morning I was oppressed with the firm

1 Professor Tyrrell clearly means accidental coincidence. A similar remark might be
made, as I have again and again pointed out, about almost every isolated case ; yet no
one, on reflection, will maintain that the cases to which it would apply have therefore no
legitimate place in a cumulative argument.

in.] DREAMS. 405

conviction that my mother had died, and though we happened to have a
half holiday that morning, I could not throw off the feeling. While we
were playing some game in our cricket field, a messenger came to say that
my master wanted to see me at once. I felt that I knew what he had to
say, and I suppose that my face must have shown some signs of my
trouble, as, before telling me that my mother had died during the
previous night, he asked me some kindly questions as to whether I
felt ill. I have never had any similar kind of dream since (indeed,
I very rarely dream), but I can never forget the impression made on
me by this dream. " H. W. D."

[The memory of the subsequent incidents in this case to some extent
confirms the coincidence. In conversation, I found the narrator very far
from disposed to attach significance to an isolated case of the sort, though
the impression made upon him was very strong.]

In the following case, though remote in date, there is no reason
to doubt that the facts are correctly recorded. It is at any rate a
point in favour of that view — and one rarely met with in second-hand
narratives of the sort — that the degree of closeness in the coincidence
is left uncertain.

(435) From Mrs. A. L. Udny, 61, Westbourne Park Villas, W.

" My father-in-law, George Udny, of the Bengal Civil Service, at one
time Member of Council there, and a great friend of Lord Wellesley when
he was Governor-General, was a man of deep religious feeling and high
honour, but I imagine not the least disposed to believe in any superstitions
or marvels ; so I think his narrative may be depended on, and this was his
account.

" He was residing at Maldah, in India, in 1794,1 and his only brother,
Robert, to whom he was much attached, was living in Calcutta, with his
wife Anne. Mr. Udny dreamed one night that he saw his brother and his
wife struggling in the water, which distressing dream awoke him. He was
about 200 miles from Calcutta, and very shortly received by d&k-post a
letter informing him that his brother and his wife had been drowned in
the Hooghly shortly before, I do not know exactly how long. Robert and
Anne Udny had been to pay a visit at Howrah on the other side of the
Hooghly, and not returning at night to their own house, the servants had
supposed that they had been induced to stay all night, and it was only the
next day found that they had left their friends and had embarked in a
Boleah (a large river pleasure boat), to return — which had got foul of, and
been overturned by, the cable of a vessel lying at anchor in the river, and
the current had carried away their bodies some distance down the stream,
where they were found locked in each other's arms."

In a letter which accompanied the account, dated 25th July, 1883, Mrs.
Udny writes : —

" I had always heard that the dream was three times repeated,2 but,
the story as I have it, written down from my husband's dictation,3 is as

1 From The Life and Times of Carey, Marahman, and Ward, the Serampore Missionaries,
we have been able to fix the incident as in January or February, 1794.

a As regards the frequent recurrence of the number three in narratives of this sort,
see p. 229, note.

3 The account was only in part dictated, but was throughout revised by Mr. Udny,
on April 27, 1861.

406 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

above ; and I believe he was afraid to add more particulars, as he was a
most exact man, and would rather understate than exaggerate, even
undesignedly, any story."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Udny adds that her husband was not
born till 1802, and therefore cannot have heard of this incident till a
good many years after its occurrence ; " but his father lived till 1830, and
it must have been often talked of after my husband had grown up."

In the next case, it seems possible that the dreamer was
impressed by some one known to her on board the ship (she knew
Captain King, the commander), and that she embodied the idea of
wreck in a simple manner.

(436) From Mr. E. Gardner Colton, Southampton Buildings, W.C.

"July 31st, 1883.

" Some years ago we were living in Derby Lane, Stoney croft, Liver-
pool. I remember one morning, early, a Mrs. Tate, a friend of my mother's
(and who lived at Iquique, Peru, but was stopping with her father in
England), came to our house and informed us she had had a very strange
dream that morning early, in which she saw the steamer ' Santiago,' of
the Pacific Company, strike on a rock in the Straits of Magellan, through
which she [Mrs. Tate] had many times passed, and founder.

" Now, the extraordinary news came several weeks later that the
steamer had that night or time run on that very rock.

" I well remember Mrs. Tate's vivid description of it. '

" E. GARDNER COLTON."

We have written to Mrs. Tate, at Iquique, but have received no reply.

Mr. Colton's mother writes, from 61, Park Street, Southend-on-Sea : —

" I remember this also, and it is quite correct. And Mrs. Tate was
so strongly impressed by the dream that she noted the time by her watch,
and, as far as I can recollect, it agreed with the time."

We learn from the Secretary of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company
that the " Santiago " was lost in the Straits of Magellan on 25th
January, 1869.

[The Times of March 19th, 1869, says that the ship "struck on a
sunken reef, not shown in the charts." This shows that the accuracy of
the dream has been to some extent exaggerated. We have no reason to
doubt its exceptional vividness ; but the case is clearly not one that would
deserve attention, so long as the reality of telepathy was doubtful.]

In the next case, which is recent and corroborated, the death-
scene is still just such as the dreamer might most naturally conjure up.

(437) Letter to the Rev. J. A. Macdonald, now of Rhyl, from Mrs.
Harrison, of Park View, Queen's Park, Manchester.

"September 2nd, 1885.

" I had a dear uncle, John Moore, St. John's, Isle of Man. I knew
he had failed in health and strength during the winter of 1883 and 1884,
but was not aware that he was really ill, or worse, so had not been
thinking of him more than usual, nor anticipating a change ; on the
contrary, I was rather sanguine that, with the return of spring, his strength

in.] DREAMS. 407

»C

would revive, knowing that he had only two years before recovered from
a severe illness, his constitution being so excellent, though he was 85
years old when he was taken away. But on the night of March 1st,
or very early in the morning of the 2nd, 1884 (I did not ascertain the
time, but I had retired to rest very late and seemed to have slept two or
three hours), I awoke crying, and with the agitating scenes of my dream
clear before me. It was that I stood in the bedroom of my uncle, that he
lay there dying, his remaining family near him, I just a short distance
from the bed, looking on. When I joined my husband and daughter at
the fireside, on coming downstairs in the morning, I told them my dream,
and then thought no more about it till two days later, 4th March, when
a letter arrived, saying that my uncle had passed away at 2 o'clock on the
morning of the 2nd. " R. J. HARRISON."

Mrs. Harrison can recall no other dream of death.

We find from the Isle of Man Register that the date of the death was
March 2, 1884.

Mr. Harrison corroborates as follows :— « September 2nd, 1885.

" I distinctly remember my wife telling me the above dream on the
Sunday morning, 2nd March, 1884, and it has often been spoken of in the
family since. The letter acquainting us of Mr. Moore's death arrived
at Manchester, from the Isle of Man, two days after, viz., Tuesday,
4th March, 1884. " J. P. HARRISON."

[In conversation I learnt that Mr. Moore's son and daughter, who
appeared in the dream, were the relatives likely to be present ; so that
point goes for nothing. But there is no doubt as to the exceptional
character of the dream. On account of the age and infirmity of the person
who died, this instance has not been included in the special group, used in
the calculation in Vol. I., Chap VIII., § 4.]

In the next two cases, again, the death is represented in a
completely natural way.

(438) From the late Mrs. Denroche, of 1, Berkeley Villas, Pittville,
Cheltenham, who said that she had " never had any distressing or remark-
able dream save this one." « February 23rd, 1885.

" On the Easter morning [1843], about 6 o'clock, I dreamt that I was
looking out of my bedroom window, and that I saw Mr. R. walking up the
avenue, and that, knowing him to be in Australia, I felt so surprised and
pleased that I ran down to meet him at the glass portico. When I put
out my hand, I said, ' Oh, how glad I am to see you again.' He looked so
sad and said, ' You will not be glad, as I bring you sad news. Your
brother Stephen is dead.' I awoke at the moment, and it seemed as
though the words were sounding in my ears. When the servant came to
assist me to dress, I told her my dream, and to comfort me she said that
dreams always went by contraries, ' and that he was most likely being
married,' but said I must not tell this dream to my mother or to any one
who might do so, as my brother writing so seldom always made her so
anxious and unhappy ; and so acting upon her advice, I did not speak of
it, but the thought of it constantly recurred during the four months that
intervened between the Easter and a visit to Bangor, in Wales, where a
letter from Mr. R., dated Easter Sunday, was forwarded to me. He wrote

408 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

to me for the reason that he thought I could more gently break the sad news
to my dear mother, and his letter commenced almost with the same words
that I had heard in the dream. He told how that, a fortnight before his
death, my brother had reached his house sadly out of health, and worn with
the toilsome journey. At once he became too ill to write, and continued
so till he died on Easter Sunday morning. " OLIVIA A. DENROCHE."

[The death must have preceded the dream by a good many hours.
The case is remote ; but the fact that Easter Sunday is so marked a day
makes it fairly probable that the coincidence was rightly remembered.
Australian newspapers have been searched, as well as the most likely
English obituaries, for a notice of the death, but without success,]

(439 and 440) From La Chance et la Destines (1876), by Foissac, p. 599.
Recit de M. Longet, membre de 1'Institut, professeur de physiologic a la
Facult^ de Me'decine de Paris.

" Notre savant confrere (M. Jules Cloquet, membre de 1'Institut, profes-
seur de Clinique Chirurgicale) nous a raconte" que sortant fort avant dans
la nuit d'une soire*e chez M. Chomel, et s'e"tant endormi, il vit en songe un
fantome qui lui representait son frere Hippolyte. II portait sur son dos une
grande liane de papiers qu'il jeta au milieu de la chambre, en lui disant,
' Maintenant je n'ai plus besoin de rien,' et il disparut. A son reVeil M.
Cloquet raconta ce songe aux personnes de son entourage sans en etre
autrement impressionne'. II se rendit a 1'hopital, fit sa Ie9on de clinique
comme a 1'ordinaire, puis M. Giron de Busarainque lui dit, en lui prenant
le bras : ' Ton frere Hippolyte est malade.' ' Aliens le voir,' repondit
M. Cloquet. Chemin faisant, M. Giron de Busarainque lui apprit
qu'Hippolyte Cloquet e*tait mort dans la nuit d'une attaque d'apoplexie.

" Le songe qui me concerne est plus explicite encore. Lorsque j'etais
e"tudiant en me'decine, et interne de Dupuytren, je revai que je voyais mon
pere atteint d'une maladie qui le conduisait au tombeau. Je m'eVeillai
dans un grand trouble que je cherchais a dominer en me disant que j'avais
quittd mon pere le dimanche d'auparaA^ant en parfaite sante" ; nous dtions
au mercredi. Je me representai que c'e'tait une grande faiblesse de
m'inquie'ter d'un songe, et je re'solus de n'en tenir aucun compte. Mais
1'image de mon pere mourant e*tait sans cesse presente a ma pensee, et
pour dchapper a cette obsession, quoique honteux de ma faiblesse, je
partis pour St. Germain, ou je trouvai mon pere atteint d'une fluxion de
poitrine qui Fenleva en cinq jours."

[This second case would more properly belong to the preceding
section.]

Similarly in the next case, the agent's actual thought may have
been the nucleus of a dream to which the dreamer supplied a
setting.

(441) From Mr. Alexander G. Sparrow, Derwent Square, Liverpool.

" 1882.

" About 23 years ago, my youngest sister was visiting my then
bachelor quarters ; there was then residing in Liverpool an old friend of
mine, D. L., a bachelor past 40, and who was considered by his friends
most unlikely to marry. One morning at breakfast I related to my sister
a very vivid dream. I was in the Old Exchange room ; not being the

in.] DREAMS. 409

'Change time, it was nearly empty. I was leaning against a sort of
counter under the clock. D. L. was sauntering up the middle of the long
narrow room ; and when he caught sight of me he quickened his step, and
smiling put out his hand, saying, ' Sparrow, congratulate me ; I am
engaged to be married, and am as spooney as I was at one-and-twenty.'
I did offer him my congratulations, and asked who the lady was, to which
he replied, ' She is an Irish girl ; I met her at Kingstown Regatta.'

" My eldest sister was, at that time, living with her husband in Ireland.
When I returned from business that evening, my sister said, ' Your dream
has come true, even the very words.' She put a letter from my eldest sister
into my hand, and I read, ' Tell Alick his friend D. L. is engaged to one
of the daughters of our rector. He met her at Kingstown Regatta.'

"ALEX. G. SPARROW."

The sister to whom the dream was told vaguely remembers the main
fact of the occurrence.

[In conversation, Mr. Sparrow told Mr. Myers that he did not know
his friend to be in Ireland, though he may have noticed that he was not
on 'Change as usual ; that there was nothing to connect his friend with
Kingstown Regatta ; that he had thought him a " regular old bachelor " ]
and that the words used in the letter were the exact words used in his
dream. But after so long an interval of time, memory cannot be implicitly
trusted for such details.]

The next dream presents an interesting mixture of right and
wrong detail. If telepathic, and not accidental, it probably fell on
the night following the event, and would then seem more naturally
referable to the agent's subsequent picturing of the scene than to an
immediate " clairvoyant " impression whose development had been
deferred. The dream, as so often in these coincident cases, produced
a quite exceptional impression of reality.

(442) From Mrs. Saxby, Mount Elton, Clevedon.

"January 31st, 1883.

Mrs. Saxby begins by saying that her husband was on the Continent
at the outbreak of the Franco-German war, and that in one of her letters
to him she copied out the famous " draft treaty."

" One night, not long after this, I saw in a kind of dream that my
husband was walking on a high road, under the shade of broad spreading
trees: I was charmed with the brilliancy of the green of their translucent
leaves, through which the sunlight streamed overhead.

" I noticed that a country cart with three men in it passed him, and
that one of the men had remarkably bushy black whiskers. They were all
dressed in blouses, and had a very peculiar kind of cap on their heads.
These caps had peaks to them. Presently the cart halted, and the men had
some communication with my husband, in which the man with the black *
whiskers took a prominent part. I noticed that the men got out and in
of the cart, and stood up and spoke for some time. There was evidently
something going on, and it ended in one of the men going one way, on
foot, while the other men jogged away in the cart in the contrary direction,
and all, including my husband, passed away.

410 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" I cannot state why I knew that this was one of my mysterious kind
of dreams, but I did, and I felt sure that something had happened to my
husband ; so I sat down and wrote to him directly, telling him my dream,
and describing the scene and the circumstances that occurred in it,
describing also the men and the cart as exactly as I could. I even etched
with my pen a picture of the man with the black whiskers, and I asked
my husband what kind of trees they were with the very bright translucent
leaves, and what had happened to him under them. On August 2nd, 1870,
dating from Luxembourg, my husband wrote to me : —

" ' MY DEAREST EPPIE, — 1 write a line from this station, while waiting
for the train, to say that all is right.

" ' This will be posted somewhere on the way up the line, and will very
likely not get to you much before I am coming in sight of England, only
it is better you should hear from me before any chance story appears in
the papers (should it so appear) of my having been taken prisoner by the
Prussians yesterday (August 1st).

" ' I was simply at Wasserbillig, the pretty frontier station of the
Luxembourg Duchy, and instead of roasting on the bridge over the little
stream which here joins the Moselle, and marks the Prussian boundary, I
strolled leisurely along in the deep shade of the walnut-trees by the
river-bank, intending to turn back as soon as I should see the Prussian
sentries.

" ' I had not gone far before I met a cart, with four sturdy peasants in
blouses. As soon as they had passed me, they stopped the cart. One of
them sprang out to cut off my retreat, and the rest took me prisoner.
They were soldiers in disguise, all signs of douanes or frontier-guard
having been done away in order to entrap spies, the patrols going about in
blouses, with revolvers underneath, and short swords tucked away in
their trousers, I think.

" ' They took me to Izel, near Treves, the nearest outpost, first possess-
ing themselves of all letters and papers out of my pouch, and the having
upon me a MS. draft of the proposed treaty for the French acquisition of
Belgium, written in French, while I asserted myself to be an Englishman,
made a fine point against me.

" ' The Major in command of the post was, luckily, a gentleman,
though very strict in his examination, and the thing ended in my being
released, and sent back to the Duchy under guard, but I was within an
ace of being sent into the interior, to headquarters, for adjudication as
a spy.

" ' You did not imagine what your diligence was putting in pickle for
me, in copying the treaty, did you ? Good-bye. — Ever your affectionate
husband, ' «'S. H. S'

"After this my husband told me that the sergeant who took him
prisoner had bushy black whiskers, and answered to the description I had
given of one of the men whom I saw in the cart. He also told me that
the soldiers, disguised as peasants, did not wear the caps with peaks,
which I had drawn ; but, strange to say, I had drawn the common foraging
cap of the Prussian soldier, I riot knowing what those soldiers wore.

" He also told me that when I sent him a copy of the draft treaty it
had not appeared in any of the Belgian papers.

IIL] DREAMS. 411

" If I recollect right, our letters crossed in reaching us.

" J. E. SAXBY."

Writing on March 25, 1886, Mrs. Saxby adds : —

" The only hitch about it is that according to my calculations I saw the
whole thing happen before it did happen, but I cannot help guessing that,
because of the uncertainty of letters at the time of the war, I made a
mistake as to dates. All I am quite sure there could be no mistake
about is, that my husband's letter about the event and mine telling
him what I had seen, crossed on the road. I have got his letter to me,
and he brought home mine to him with the picture on it ; but he
subsequently burnt it, so my date was lost."

In the next case, a feature is introduced into the dream which
happened to be impossible, but was in no way fantastic or symbolic.

(443) From Mr. J. D. Best, 70, Meldon Street, Newcastle-on-Tyne.

" December 23rd, 1885.

" The experience that you refer to took place just four years ago. My
age was almost 19, and at the time I was in perfect health mentally, though
physically rather fagged. The particulars, as far as I remember them,
were as follows : —

" I had spent the evening of December 5th in close study at Greek
grammar. About 11 o'clock I stopped, and sat down by the fire to read
Manon Lescaut. Some time afterwards I fell asleep, and it was then that
the idea of my grandmother's illness or death (I am uncertain which) first
came to me. On wakening, about 12.30, 1 found my dictionary under the
bars, and my anxiety for that made me, for the moment, forget my dream.
Carelessly leaving the gas burning, I went to bed ; and all I remember is
that every particular of the room which I saw was strongly impressed
upon me ; that the old lady was breathing very heavily ; and, strangest of
all, my mother, who was and is in Australia, seemed in the room. She, as
I thought, turned to me, saying, ' I fear, Duncan, she is dying ! ' How
long it was before I wakened I cannot say ; but every fact was strangely
distinct, for I seem to remember even the ticking of the clock. The gas
being quite bright when I awoke, I rose to extinguish it, and quite
accidentally noticed the time.

" On receiving the intimation of her death, on the morning of December
7th (Wednesday), the time, I noticed after my surprise had passed away,
was. between 4 and 5 a.m. On further inquiry, my aunt said that it was
between half-past 4 and 5 o'clock. The time I had noticed was 5.30. I
did not know that my relative was ill until I heard the news of her death.
She was no great friend to me, and consequently I rarely troubled her, or
thought of her. I had received a letter a week before, saying that she
was not very well ; but as she was a woman of about 76 years, I took but
little notice of this, and had thought no more about it.

" You ask if I have ever had other dreams of death, which did not
correspond with the reality. I think I can honestly answer ' No.'

" JOHN D. BEST."

[Mr. Best has gone to Australia, which prevents us for the time from
obtaining further details.]

412 SUPPLEMENT, [CHAP.

The next case introduces a distinctly bizarre element — the
percipient's imagination reacting in a typically dreamlike fashion
on the telepathic impression.

(444) From Miss Hutchinson, 3, Bagdale, Whitby.

"December 6th, 1885.

" On the morning of the 15th February, 1864 — the day after Valen-
tine's Day, which impressed it on my mind — my father told me he had had
that night a most painful and vivid dream, begging me not to mention it
to our mother. The dream was this. Our dear E. clinging to him wet
and naked, and begging him to save him, for he was drowning ; but the
form was not that of a man of 22, but what he was as a baby.

" Early in March we received the sad intelligence that E. was drowned
off the Cape, on the 14th February, through the swamping of a boat. He
and one of his brother officers were caught in a squall when returning to
H.M.S. ' Tartar,' after a few hours leave. These are the plain facts.

" ELIZABETH L. HUTCHINSON."

In reply to inquiries, Miss Hutchinson adds : —

"Both my father and mother are dead, and if my father made any
note of the dream at the time, it has been destroyed. It was natural for
him to tell me, being the eldest in the family, six years older than my
naval brother. It was on the morning of the 15th that he told me of his
dream. A fortnight later, the Cape mail brought the sad news. An
apparently foolish and trivial thing impressed the date on my memory at
the time that it was told me, the day after Valentine's Day."

We find from the Admiralty that Lieut. A. E. Hutchinson's death
occurred on Feb. 14, 1865 ; and Miss Hutchinson has kindly sent us a
photograph of a tablet, erected to his memory, which records that he was
drowned in Simon's Bay on the night of that day, by the swamping of a
boat. The difference of time between England and the Cape is not much
over an hour.

In the following case the brightness of the figure, and its gesture,
were imagery sufficiently appropriate to the circumstances. We
should hardly be justified in treating the experience as other than a
dream; but it must be remarked that the form of the vision — a single
figure appearing in the room where the percipient knows himself to
be — is very unlike ordinary dreaming (see cases 527 and 545).

(445) From the Rev. John Mathwin, Vicar of West Pelton, Co.
Durham. "December 19th, 1884.

" Forty years ago, or thereabouts, when I was about 20 years of age,
a lady friend of mine, a distant relative by marriage — age between 40 and
50 — had for some time been in a delicate state of health, though not
confined to the house. We frequently had quiet conversations together
on religious matters. Neither of us was of an excitable turn of mind.
As well as I can now recollect, I last saw my friend alive about a fort-
night before her death. She did not seem at that time to be worse than

in.] DREAMS. 413

usual, and apparently might have lived at any rate for a. few years.
However, one night when I was in bed — say about 4 o'clock in the morn-
ing— I had what I may call a vision. A figure appeared before me neatly
draped, and a certain brightness about it seemed to awake me. I at once
felt conscious that someone was near me who wished to make a communi-
cation to me. I soon recognised the face of my invalid friend. She
seemed to wish to give me time to collect myself — evidently intimating
that there was no cause why I should be afraid. As a matter of fact I
had no fear at all. My then feelings may perhaps be best described as
partaking both of wonder (or expectation) and pleasure. When, ap-
parently, the figure had convinced herself that I recognised her, and that
I had satisfied myself that I was under no delusion, she seemed to beckon
me cheeringly with one or two fingers of her right hand, and to say to
me, ' It's all right ; come on.' She then vanished, and I neither saw nor
heard anything more.

" Though there was no injunction given to me not to tell what I had
seen, I yet felt that the communication was of too solemn a nature to
allow me at once to talk of it openly. But I said to my brother at
breakfast, about 8 o'clock that morning, that I had dreamt in the night
that Mrs. So-and-so was dead, and it turned out, as we heard about
10 o'clock, that our friend had died during the night. For some years I
never mentioned this experience to anyone, but afterwards I felt no
hesitation in talking about it to intimate friends."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Math win writes on Feb. 17th, 1885 : —

" To my brother I spoke of what I call the vision as if it had been
a dream ; but this was because I did not wish to draw his attention
very specially to it, although I felt constrained to mention it to him in
some way.

" He tells me now that he has no recollection of my having spoken to
him about it, as I did at breakfast, on the morning of the death, but
before we knew of the death having taken place. I am not, however,
surprised that my brother should not now recollect the remark I made to
him at that time.

" I never had any similar experience before, neither have I had since.
I had no reason to expect any communication of the kind at any time.

"JOHN MATHWIN."

[In an uncorroborated case of so remote a date, it is of course im-
possible to be certain that the coincidence was as exact as in memory it
appears to have been.]

The next case is very similar, though it was possibly not the
dying person who was the agent.

(446) From Mrs. Penny, The Cottage, Cullompton.

"November 30th, 1882.

" One day I slept late, having a bad headache, and dreamed that I was
in a wonderfully beautiful garden, and while I walked along its alleys a
friend of one of my sisters, F. H., came smiling towards me, dressed in
white, and looking radiant with joy. She said, ' I am here now,' and it is

414 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

always so lovely.' On waking, I found breakfast and letters brought up,
and one open on my pillow to my sister from the sister of F. H., telling
her that she had died after a very short illness.

" Now, as this poor F. H., who seldom had a day's happiness, was to
me only an acquaintance, I conclude that the aura of her sister conveyed
to my higher consciousness the fact of which she was full, and in the
momentary duration of a dream this fact got translated into the adjacent
ideas of life in Paradise.

" Very likely the consciousness of my two sisters did affect my
dreaming brain by some wave of new and energetic impulse ; but I
know there had been no possibility of talking in my room that morning.
Though it all happened years ago, I can vouch for the accuracy of my
memory. I cannot be sure whether it was in 1852 or a year or two
later. "A. J. PENNY."

We find from a notice in the Gentleman's Magazine that F. H. died
on June 6, 1852.

(447) From a German nurse who has been for 22 years in the service
of Mrs. Balgarnie, of 9, Filey Road, Scarborough.

"July 9th, 1885.

" In February, 1871, I dreamed one night that I received a letter, on
the envelope of which was written in my father's handwriting, ' 0 Death,
where is thy sting ? '

" Next morning I went in great trouble to my mistress, saying I felt
perfectly sure my father must be dead, and related my dream. This
fact was immediately written down, but the paper cannot now be found.
Three days after the news came that my father had died that Sunday
night, quite suddenly. During the day of the night on which he died he
had evidently wished to tell me something, for he twice said, ' Tell Marie,
tell Marie !' He soon became unconscious, and died in his sleep. I had
not seen him for eight years, and though I knew he was not well, I had no
idea that death was expected. My father lived and died in Germany,
while I was, and am, in England. " MARIE LAUTIER."

Miss Balgarnie, writing on December llth, 1884, gave us a precisely
similar account, saying, " the date and circumstances were put down by
us immediately " on the narration of the dream.

Mrs. Balgarnie writes on July 28, 1885 : —

In answer to yours, I can only say that the nurse told me her dream,
on my entering the nursery one morning, adding, ' I am sure my father is
dead.' And so it proved ; in three days the letter announced the fact, and
that he died with her name on his lips.

" I do not think I can give you any more particulars. I can't find the
memorandum of the incident. " M. BALGARNIE."

[The narrator's father, it appears, had been ill for 3 or 4 months ; and
she states that, though she had not heard of his being worse, her thoughts
had been a good deal occupied with him. Mrs. Balgarnie, however, thinks
that she now rather exaggerates the extent to which this was the case,
from an objection to having her experience regarded as of any special
interest.]

in.] DREAMS. 415

In the next case, the imagery is again distinctly suggestive of
death, and fantastically represents the popular conception of " spirit "
as a tenuous form of matter, but has no emotional character.

(448) From Mr. W. Brooks, Brooksby House, 87, Petherton Road
Highbury New Park, N. « May 27th, 1885.

"On the 15th November, 1875, at 5, Wallace Road, N., at 7.45 a.m.,
or thereabouts, I saw my late brother as a spirit, but when I spoke to
' him,' he gradually disappeared. I then woke up.

" On arriving at Hastings the following morning, I learnt from my
sister that the above was the time my brother died there. This was the
only time I ever saw him in the form of a ' ghost.' « w H BROOKS "

We find the date and place of death confirmed in the Times obituary.

The following is a more detailed account of the dream : —

" The ' appearance ' was : There was a long room or gallery, and
several of my friends there, including my brother. He was like ' Pepper's
Ghost' as regards substance, or rather want of substance. None of the
other friends had a hazy appearance. They were in ordinary attire, as I
should see them in a room. My brother was the only ' ghostly ' figure.
He advanced gradually towards me, which made me feel a little nervous,
and looked kindly at me. I advanced a little and said, 'James, why do
you not speak 1 ' which utterance seemed to make him recede. He retired
a little down the room, and gradually became more indistinct, and disap-
peared. None of the friends seemed to take any decided notice, and did
not speak. I then woke. My forcing or insisting upon a reply seemed to
be the cause of my waking, and I had to look round to gather myself
together and ascertain that I was in bed when I so awoke.

" I do not think I can afford any corroboration. On the afternoon of
the same day, I mentioned the matter to my aunt and her husband. She
is now dead, and I do not think my uncle would recollect the account. I
did not make much of it, as I was a disbeliever in ghosts. I dared not
mention the occurrence to my mother, as she would have grieved all day
about my brother if I had.

" I have never had any other similar instance. I have had relations
die, but have been near them at the time of death. « -yy jj BROOKS "

In later letters Mr. Brooks writes : —

" I have communicated with my uncle as I promised, but he does not
recollect any of the circumstances.

" In reply to your further queries : —

1. "The dream did not make a, particularly unpleasant impression ; it
was certainly unpleasant and unusual, and on waking I felt nervous, but
the occurrence faded from my memory slowly, so far as the sharp impres-
sion was concerned. All day Sunday, however, I was wondering how my
brother was, and when I saw my sister on the Monday I thought of the *
strange coincidence.

2. " My sister recollects when she informed me (of the ' time ' of the
death) on the Monday that I remarked, ' How strange ! that is the time I
saw James at my bedside.'

416 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

3. "I had no reason to expect my brother's death at the time it did
take place, except an expectation that one's worst fears might at any time
be realised in a case where consumption had taken hold."

The following is from Mr. Brooks' sister, Mrs. Plaistowe : —

" Brooksby House, August 4th, 1885.

" In answer to your letter, I have to state that my brother William,
on his arriving at Hastings in November, 1875, and being informed by me
of the hour of my late brother James's death (viz., a quarter to 8 a.m.),
said that it exactly coincided with the time that he, my brother William,
saw James in a spirit or vision. [In conversation, Mrs. Plaistowe stated
that Mr. Brooks came down on the Monday afternoon, and, on hearing
the hour of his brother's death, came to the conclusion that the dream was
exactly coincident.]

" I may remark that the death was unexpected by the members of
the family, as James was away from home with me at Hastings ; and
although he had been suffering from consumption for three or four years,
no intimation of his becoming worse had been received by any one in
the family, so that my brother's statement to you is corroborated by me.

"M. PLAISTOWE."

On examination it turned out that Mr. Brooks' strong impression is
that his dream occurred on a Sunday morning — in which case it preceded
the death by some 24 hours, though of course falling at a time of critical
illness. This view accords with his recollection of mentioning the dream
to his uncle and aunt in the afternoon ; but is opposed to his recollection
(which Mrs. Plaistowe supports) of noticing at the time that the
coincidence was exact. There being a doubt on the matter, the case
must not be included in the special group of death-dreams dealt with
in Vol. I., p. 307.

(449) The journal Psychische Studien (Leipzig) for March, 1874,
contains a long and interesting account, written down for the late
Professor Perty, of Berne, by the wife of the Russian Imperial Councillor,
M. Alex. Aksakof, who says that he has frequently heard all the
particulars.

Madame Aksakof was 19 at the time of the occurrence, and
says that she "had no ideas about Spiritualism, and no tendency to
enthusiasm or mysticism." The principal incidents were that Madame
Aksakof's brother-in-law, Dr. A. F. Sengireef, from whom she had parted
about half a year previously with some coldness, appeared to her, on the
night of May 12th, 1855, in what seems to have been a very prolonged
and feverish vision, in which she must have been partially awake, as in
the course of it she heard the clock strike 3, and her child and its nurse
move. The figure in the vision held his cold hand on her mouth, and
repeatedly bade her kiss it ; and then, after spreading out a roll of
parchment beside her, recited a prayer in front of a crucifix, and finally
disappeared, to the sound of sacred music and in a blaze of light. She
noticed his "long black hair hanging down on his shoulders, and a large
round beard such as I had never seen him wear. The day after this
terrible event," she continues, "we received the news of the illness of my
brother-in-law, Sengireef, and about a fortnight later, tidings of his death,

in.] DREAMS. 417

which took place in that night of the 12th-13th of May, about 5 o'clock
in the morning. The following is noteworthy. When my sister-in-law,
a few weeks after the death of her husband, came to live with us at
Romanoff-Borissogliebsk, she mentioned incidentally to a lady in my
presence that her late husband had been buried with long hair hanging
down to his shoulders, and with a large curious-looking beard which had
grown during his illness."

M. Aksakof suggests that the parchment in the vision may have
represented a " sin-remission chart " which it is a Russian custom to place
in coffins.

I will now give a group of cases where death is symbolised in
some more mundane and gloomy manner.

(450) From a lady whose name I am at liberty to mention, but not to
print.

"March 5th, 1885.

" Two friends of ours, Mr. X. [name given in confidence] and Mr. Y.,
lived together till the marriage of Mr. X., and were, therefore, intimately
associated in our minds.

" It happened that though Mrs. X. and I had exchanged cards we had
not met, and I merely knew her by sight at the time when Mr. Y. also
married. But as I had found Mrs. Y. at home, I was slightly acquainted
with her.

"It was a few months after Mr. Y.'s marriage, on the night of
May 14th, 1879, when my dream occurred. I was staying at Bristol
at the time. It seemed to me that I was making my first call on Mrs. Y.,
and that she proceeded to show me her trousseau — a thing that would
never have occurred to her in actual life, or to any but very intimate
friends. A variety of dresses were displayed, and as I was looking at a
black-net evening dress, with crimson trimmings, thinking it was very like
one of my own, a sudden transformation took place. Mrs. Y. had changed
into Mrs. X., and the dress was a widow's dress complete. I woke very
strongly impressed with the dream, and mentioned it to my father the next
morning. It haunted me till, on May 15th or 16th, I saw the Times
announcement of Mr. X.'s death.

"Afterwards I learnt that, on the afternoon preceding my dream,
Mr. X. had returned home, apparently in his usual good health, only
rather tired, but within-half-an-hour had died of quite unsuspected heart
disease.

" My father was ill at the time of my dream, and does not remember
the circumstance. But my sister remembers it clearly, and testifies to the
fact [by her initials]. « ^ E jj

"J.T. R."

We find from the Times obituary of May 16, 1879, that the death
took place on May 14.

In answer to inquiries, Miss R. says : —

" My sister was not with me, so I could not speak about it to her. I can-
not find any of my letters written after May 14th, so do not know if I wrote

VOL. II. 2 B

418 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

to her on the 15th or not. But she came to me (as my father was taken
seriously ill about that date) and heard of the dream and of the death
at the time [i.e., she heard of the dream at the same time as she heard of
the death]. I am quite certain that the dream was on the night of the day
of death, May 14th."

Fortunately Miss R. has been able to obtain a copy of a letter (post
mark, Bristol, May 17, 1879), which she wrote to a friend 3 days after
her dream ; in which the following words occur : —

" Poor Mr. X. died on Wednesday ; I do not know of what.

" On Wednesday night [May 14th] (having heard nothing of them, Mr.
and Mrs. X., for months, since I saw them looking well and happy
together), I dreamed Mrs. X. was showing me her trousseau, and that she
called special attention to an elaborately made shroud. She said that
Scotch people always considered these the most necessary part of a
trousseau. The one I saw was her husband's ; hers changed to simply a
black dress, as I looked at it. It was a very vivid dream and impressed
me. Last night we saw the death in the Times, May 14th."

Referring to the account above quoted, Miss R. adds : —
" I do not know why I should have forgotten about the shroud ; this
must have been one of the many dresses I saw before the change took
place. My friend did not know the Y.'s, and did not know Mr. X.,
so that I left out any superfluous matter."

(451) From a niece of the late Rev, G. L. Foote, Rector of Christ's
Church, Roxbury, Litchfield Co., Conn., U.S.A. "1884

" In 1848, the Rev. George L. Foote drove with his family to Windham,
Greene Co., N.Y., to visit Mrs. Foote's mother. At this time, his
youngest brother, Henry, afterwards Dr. H. H. Foote, of Newtown, Fair-
field Co., Ct., was studying medicine in Durham, about 10 miles from
Windham, and living with an aunt who resided there. Mr. Foote, with
his family, arrived in Windham on Friday, and it was his intention to start
on his return to Roxbury on Monday, deferring his visit to his brother
and aunt until his return for his family a few weeks later. On Friday
night he dreamed that he was taking the body of his brother home to
Newtown in a metallic coffin, and that he had died of small-pox. He
thought not enough of the dream the next day to speak of it, but on
Saturday night he dreamed the same dream in every particular twice,1 and
it so impressed him that he was unable to keep it out of his mind.

" The clergyman of the place desired him to preach for him on Sunday,
and he consented ; but during the whole of the service and the sermon, the
recollection of the dream continually intruded itself upon his thoughts.
After service he told his brother-in-law, O. S. Tuttle, now of Minneapolis,
Minn., that it was impressed upon his mind that something was wrong at
Durham, and he wished he would harness his horse and drive him over
there. He accordingly did so, and as they drove up in front of the house
of his aunt, she came out upon the porch, and holding up her hands,
exclaimed, ' George Foote ! What has sent you here ? I have just

1 As to the Repetition, see Vol. i., pp. 357, 445. and cf. case 213, and cases 457
and 484 below.

in.] DREAMS. 419

persuaded Henry to let me write to ask you to come and take care of him ;
he is sick with small-pox.' Although she had had the disease and conse-
quently was not afraid of it, she knew she could not alone take care of him,
and that of all the relatives George was the only one who could with
perfect safety attend him, as, while in Trinity College, Hartford, he had
varioloid, in consequence of taking care of a room-mate who had the same
disease. Mr. Tuttle returned to Windham, leaving Mr. Foote to nurse
his brother through the sickness, which was so terrible that very few have
ever been so low and have been raised again to health and strength.

" Mr. Foote used often to say that, if anyone had been nursing his
brother who had no special interest in him, he had no doubt he would have
been buried ; for at three different times he himself thought the last breath
had been drawn, but he persevered in the use of restoratives, and by the
most assiduous care helped fan to a flame the apparently dying spark."

Mr. H. L. Foote, son of the Rev. George L. Foote in the narrative,
writes : —

" The above account is given by the niece of the Rev. George L. Foote,
and is substantially the same that I have heard spoken of by the members
of my family."

The Rev. R. Whittirigham, of Pikesville, Maryland, U.S.A., a Corre-
sponding Member of the S.P.R., writes on September 9, 1884 : —

" Several years ago I heard the Rev. Mr. G. L. Foote allude to this
dream as having saved his brother's life, according to his belief. He was
ignorant of any existence of small-pox [at this place] as it had not been
prevalent ; nor did it become epidemic, although there were three or four
other cases at the time." [This last point is from a reply of the Rev. G.
L. Foote himself to an inquiry which had been specially addressed to him
on the subject.]

(452) From Miss Tracy, Mawson Road, St. Barnabas, Cambridge (now
Mrs. William Tracy). M December> 1885>

" My mother died on the llth of February, 1882, about 8.30 p.m., on
a Saturday, at Beccles, Suffolk. At that time, my youngest brother, who
is blind, was (and is still) at the Blind College, Worcester. On the
evening above mentioned, he went to bed as usual, and, I believe, to
sleep. Rather later in the evening, one of the masters went into the room
where my brother was, to see if all was right. When there, he heard one
of the boys crying, and found it was my brother, who said his mother had
come to him to say good-bye, as she was going away, <fec. It was some
time before he could be quieted. He did not hear of his mother's death
until the Monday following. He was at the time 9 years old.

" This is as nearly as possible what I was told nearly four years ago.
If the master who heard him was found out, he would be able to give it
more correctly. c< j] ]y[ TRACY "

In conversation with a friend of ours, who made inquiries on our
behalf, Miss Tracy said that her mother had died very suddenly. She
had complained of a slight headache about 5 o'clock, and died between 8
and 8.30. She was unconscious for some time before she died ; therefore
it would have been impossible to tell the exact moment of her death ;
VOL. n. 2 E 2

420 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

and in the consternation of the moment they did not look at the time.
The boy said that he had seen his mother (it appears that he always speaks
of seeing people, though quite blind) ; that he had tried to hold her, but
that she had slipped away from him. He did not refer to the vision the
next morning, nor has he ever alluded to it since ; and they do not wish
him to be reminded of the circumstance."

The Times obituary confirms the date given, and the fact that the
death was sudden.

The following letter is from the Rev. S. G. Forster, Head-Master of
the Blind College, Worcester. <{ December mhj 18g5

" The facts of the boy Tracy's dream, as elicited from himself, are that
he dreamed on the Saturday night, during the night (and did not wake up
till 7 a.m. next morning), that his mother was dead, and was being buried
in part of our old place called The Swings. His mother, as I understand
(but Miss Tracy could clear this up), died at 8 p.m. on Saturday night.
Tracy would go to bed at 9 or 9.15, an hour or so after the occurrence.
Owing to the surprise and trouble at home, we did not hear of it by letter
till the Monday after. " S G FORSTER "

In reply to inquiries, Mr. Forster writes on January 5, 1886 : —

" I do not remember who the particular person was to whom he told
his dream, but I can distinctly state we all knew of it, and that the dream
was described before the fact was known."

Mr. Forster subsequently ascertained that the dream was first related,
not to a master, but to Mr. L. G. Sandford, one of his pupils, who has
written to us as follows : —

" Icomb Rectory, Stow-on-the-Wold.

" February 12th, 1886.

" I regret that, at this distance, I cannot give you dates. As far as my
recollections go, Tracy told me of his dream on the morning following the
night on which he had it. It was simply that his mother had died.
Beyond this, it was mixed up with all the inconsistencies and absurdities
common to dreams, and which I do not think it necessary to mention,
unless you particularly wish to hear them. The news of his mother's
death reached him on the day after he told me of his dream, her death
having happened on the same day — that is, the day on which he told me.
I believe she died late in the afternoon, but of this I am not sure.

" L. G. SANDFORD."

(453) From a lady who prefers that her name should not appear.

" My father was one of a family of 21 children, between many of
whom naturally little or no communication was kept up in after years.
Among them was an uncle living at Blackheath, whose wife I had never
seen, and all I knew of her was that she was suffering from a mortal
disease, but of her prospects of a more or less prolonged life I had heard
nothing, nor had my thoughts been in any way turned towards her — when
one Sunday night, while I was on a visit to an aunt in Hampshire, I
dreamt that I had a letter from my aunt at Blackheath, urgently pressing
me to come and see her. Accordingly in my dream I set out, and
travelling all night, arrived at Blackheath on Monday morning. I was

in.] DREAMS. 421

shown up to my aunt's room, who lamented to me that she had been so
much estranged from our branch of the family, and after talking for a
while, she looked at her watch and said, 'It is a quarter past 8, now you
must go ' ; telling me to go down to the others. I had great difficulty in
finding my way in an unknown house, and was a long time about it, but
at last, when I saw by my watch that it was a quarter to 9, I reached
the dining-room, and found there a number of my relations in mourning,
who explained it by saying that my aunt was dead.

" In the morning I had a very vivid impression of my dream, which
I told to my relations with whom I was staying ; and I had so strong a
feeling of the reality of the intimation, that I wrote privately to my
dressmaker to countermand a pink silk dress that I had ordered. The
next day, when a mourning letter arrived, I said, ' Now you will see that
Aunt Eliza is dead.' And so it proved to be the case, my aunt having
died at 8.30 on Monday morning, midway between the time at which she
had told me in my dream that I must go, and the time I reached the
dining-room where her relations told me that she was dead. It will be
observed that my dream was several hours before the actual death."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death occurred on
February 2, 1869, which was a Monday.

[The countermanding of the pink dress may certainly be taken as a
sign that the dream produced an exceptional impression. The narrator is
out of England, and we have been unable to obtain the corroboration of
her relatives.]

(454) From Mr. Richard Mountjoy Gardiner (Solicitor), 8, Bath
Terrace, Blyth, and 13, Groat Market, Newcastle-on-Tyne.

" February 6th, 1884.

" In 1875 I was in a sailing ship bound for Australia. Amongst the
officers on board was one of my dearest friends ; he was third mate,
and had to keep watch from 8 to 12 on the forecastle. I invariably
made it a rule to stay with him during his watch. One night, after his
duty was over, instead of staying for an hour and smoking a pipe as was
his general custom, he ' turned in.' I remained smoking and talking to
the sailors. About 1.15 my friend came up to me in a very excited
manner and said, ' I am sure that the Major ' (who was his father) ' is dead,
as I dreamt I saw him put in his coffin.' I tried to calm him as much as
I could, and told him it was nonsense. However, he would not go back
to his cabin that night, so we remained on deck until morning. With
the return of daylight he recovered his spirits, and felt inclined to laugh
at his dream. In the evening he kept watch as usual, but again turned
in a few minutes past 12. I remained on deck ; about 1.10 he came
rushing up and said he knew his father was dead as he had seen the coffin
put into the hearse, and had followed it to Kensal Green Cemetery, and
had seen it lowered into the grave. I took him into my cabin and made
him sleep in my bunk. He was very quiet for a few days after, and could
not bear to have the subject mentioned. However, he shortly recovered
his usual good spirits. [On their arrival at Melbourne, a letter conveying
the news of his father's death was found there.] After a few weeks he
was able to calmly talk the matter over, and on our consulting our diaries,
we found that his father had died on the same night as his first dream, and

422 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

was buried on the second. On our return to England, we ascertained
(after calculating the difference of time) that his father died and was
buried at the exact time that he dreamed it. The most curious thing was
that he died at an hotel in Harley Street, Cavendish Square, London, of
dropsy, and the proprietress — for the convenience of her visitors —
requested that he might be buried the day after he died, which was done.
There are others besides myself who can vouch that the whole of what I
have written is true.

"Another curious fact about my friend's dream was that he dreamed
his father was buried at Kensal Green, which was the fact, though his
family vault is at Brompton Cemetery, but for some reason there was not
time to go through the necessary formalities to have it opened.

" RICHARD MOUNTJOY GARDINER."

[We hope in time to receive an account of this incident from the
dreamer himself, Mr. G., who is now on distant service. Inquiries have
been made at every lodging-house and private hotel in Harley Street, but
most of them have changed hands since 1875, and we could obtain no
record of the death. There is probably some mistake as to the Kensal Green
Cemetery; for we find that no Major G. was buried there in 1875.
But apart from this, it is difficult to see how the statement as to the
second dream can possibly be correct. For since the letter had
time to outstrip Mr. Gardiner's ship, that ship must have been quite 6
weeks' sail from Australia at the time of death, and probably not far
east of long. 0°. To have exactly coincided, therefore, with the second
dream, the funeral would have had to take place at midnight. It will be
observed that the second dream, while difficult to account for by telepathy,
would be a very natural sequel to the first. Cf. case 468 below.]

(455) From Mr. G. H. F. Prynne, 10, Torriiigton Square, W.C., who
wrote the following letter to his mother, from Australia, in the autumn
of 1874:—

" I was extremely sorry to hear [in a letter from his mother] of the
sad death of poor Miss E. I remember her very well, and have her name
in my diary for 1871 mentioned several times, and it is a most extra-
ordinary thing that on the night of the 7th of April (or 8th), I am
not quite certain which, I had an extraordinary dream.

" I dreamt I was walking along some road with dear Ted, and that I
met two people, carrying a box. We both asked to see the contents. These
gloomy personages stood still, put the box on the road, and then ran off.
I came and opened the box, which I had no sooner done than a dead hand
of a corpse fell on to mine. I can well remember the feeling of horror
that came over me, and I ran back, saying I would not examine the box
further. The face seemed to me like that of Edith L. Eddie said he
would see who it was, and on returning I found it to be the corpse of
some well-known person, which in the latter part of the dream I recognised
to be that of Miss E. *

" The dream seemed so much out of the ordinary that I told it fully
to H. and two other friends at breakfast, and also to the W.'s two days
afterwards."

1 As regards the particular form of delayed recognition, this case resembles No. 249
and once more exemplifies the parallelism of dreams and waking hallucinations.

in.] DREAMS. 423

Colonel B., father of the Miss E. referred to, writes that Mr. Prynne
had met his daughter a few times, in 1871, when she was about
14£ years old; and that she died on April 8th, 1874. From the Times
obituary, we find that she died in the morning of that day. Thus whether
the dream in Australia was on the night of the 7th or of the 8th, it may
very well have been within 12 hours of the death.

[Mr. Prynne has tried to procure corroborative testimony to his
immediate mention of the dream ; but his friends have moved, and he has
not yet succeeded. He is certain that his dream was on one of the nights
mentioned, though he does not now recall what enabled him to fix it so
accurately some months afterwards. It will be observed that the doubt
which he felt between two nights is a strong indication that he had some
independent means of narrowing down the time to that extent. He believes
that he mentioned his dream in a letter to his mother at the time, before
hearing of the death ; but no such letter can now be found.]

(456) From Mrs. Mogridge, of 137, Cowbridge Road, Canton, Cardiff.

"January 3rd, 1884.

" My little girl, aged 7, came into my room on the morning of the 25th
of December, 1882. She said, ' Oh, mamma, I have had such a dream : I
saw baby Harris in a little box on the table downstairs, and her hands
were crossed ; and she looked so white.' [Mr. Mogridge tells us that
the Harrises were acquaintances in a distant part of the town.] I am
certain she had not seen the child, nor had she heard us speak of it or the
family, and I do not think she had seen it more than once during the four
months of its life.

" On the evening of the 25th or 26th, my daughter, aged 17, told me
of the death of the child, which took place on the night of the 24th. And
a day or two after, the mother took my little girl into her house, and
showed her the child in the coffin on the table (where it had been placed
for the convenience of the inquest), exactly as she had described it to me
in her dream. « M A MOGRIDGE."

The death was caused suddenly by an accident ; and the Register of
Deaths confirms the date given.

[We should not be disposed to lay stress on the correspondence here,
beyond the simple coincidence of the death. The details were not written
down, and may have crept in afterwards ; and in any case the coffin, as we
have found, is a very common dream-symbol. The case is one of those where
perspnal knowledge of the witness has been a specially important element
in our judgment.]

(457) From a lady whose friends would prefer that her name should
not appear. « 1Q84.

" I had a dear friend at Ilfracombe — the wife of the incumbent, the
Rev. W. M. We did not correspond much, and I had not seen her for.
some months. I went down to Plymouth, and the first night, as the
rooms we took were not quite ready for us, my friend, Miss P., slept with
me. I awoke frightened and sad, having dreamt thus : —

" I sat in a wide hall in some unknown house. Mrs. M. entered and
walked slowly towards me dressed in white, with a long dark cloak over

424 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

her snowy robes. As she neared me she uncovered her arm, and I saw
that she was carrying a little dead baby. As I looked at her, I felt that
she was mad, and yet dead, too ! Mr. M. followed her, and signed to me
that her mind was gone. It was her pallor that made me feel she was a
spirit ; the expression in her eyes told me she was insane, or delirious.
Mrs. M., after showing me the dead child, turned silently away and went
up a staircase on to the roof, which was a flat roof. Mr. M. and I
followed her. She dug with her hands at this roof, and earth seemed to
come up. She buried the baby in this earth, then lying down upon this
strange grave she sank through it, and disappeared from sight. I awoke,
and woke Miss P., and related my dream. She soothed my alarm, and,
being very tired, I fell asleep. The dream was repeated, and before
morning I had dreamt it three times,1 and knew, instinctively, it was in
some way true.

" Throughout the day I was restless and unhappy. The next morning
a deeply-edged letter came, and as I saw the black-rimmed envelope
I cried out, ' Oh, my dream, my dream ! Mrs. M. is dead ! ' And so
it was. She had been prematurely confined of a dead child ; had delirium
and fever, and died unconscious, or rather, insane, on the night of my
dream."

We find from a notice in the Western Times that the death occurred
on Nov. 13, 1862.

In answer to inquiries, the narrator says : —

" My friend Miss P., who was with me that night, I have lost sight
of for years. Yes, I often dream, but I have not realised a death in
an illustrated form except that once."

[One rather distrusts this amount of detail, remembered after a lapse
of a good many years ; but some kind of death-imagery was probably a
feature in the dream.]

(458) From Mrs. Williams, 1, Wilmington Place, Clerkenwell, W.C.
A shorter account was given in writing to our friend, the Rev. A. T.
Fryer, in February, 1883, immediately after the receipt of news of the

"January 1st, 1886.

" I had an uncle, father's brother, living in Birmingham. On the night
of the 21st December, 1882, I dreamt that I saw him standing by my
bedside. I saw him quite plainly, and he said, ' If you wish to see me, you
must come at once.' Afterwards I saw him in a cart, laid in a coffin. I
woke my husband and told him about it — said that I felt sure something
had happened. He said it was only fancy, and told me to go to sleep. In
the morning we talked about it again. The 22nd December was the anni-
versary of our wedding, and that fixed the date of the dream in our minds.
We heard nothing about the death until February 9th, 1883, when, in
answer to a letter from my husband, the enclosed card and letter came
from my aunt in Birmingham. The impression on my mind was certainly
that something had happened to my uncle. The dream must have been
within a few hours, as he died at 5 a.m. 22nd December, and it was in the
night of the 21st>22nd that I had the dream and woke my husband."

1 See p. 418, note ; also p. 229, note, as to the number three.

in.] DREAMS. 425

The following is an extract, copied by the present writer, from the
letter written to Mrs. Williams by her aunt : —

"February 8th, 1883.

" I kave lost my poor brother. He went to bed on the 20th December ;
on the 21st I found him, at 9 o'clock in the morning, in a fit. I sent [for]
a doctor. He never spoke, and died the next morning at 5 o'clock — on
the 22nd. Poor fellow ! Now I am left without anyone."

The enclosed mourning-card contains these words : — " In affectionate
remembrance of David Gillan, who departed this life December 22nd, 1882,
aged 64 years. Interred at Witton Cemetery, December 28th."

In conversation, Mrs. Williams told me that she did not remember
having dreamt of death, or of her uncle, on any other occasion. Her
husband stated to me that his wife woke him immediately after her dream,
and that she told him the details of it next morning, and that they noted
the date as being the anniversary of their wedding. I asked to see their
marriage-certificate, and found that it was for Dec. 22, 1872. Mrs.
Williams was not aware of anything being amiss with her uncle, nor
had she for a long time previously heard of his being ill in any way at
all. His death was sudden.

The next case is, of all the dreams included in this book, the one
least easy to harmonise with the view of telepathy that the great
bulk of our evidence supports, owing to the absence of any perceptible
link between agent and percipient. If we could suppose that we had
lighted on the one death-dream (of those occurring during the last
12 years, within our circle of inquiry) which by the doctrine of
chances might probably have coincided with reality by accident
(Vol. I., p. 306), this would be the one to select. But though the
type is abnormal we should not be justified in suppressing examples
of it on that account ; and the " borderland " cases, Nos. 490 and 506,
of the next chapter, might be adduced as somewhat similar.1

(459) From Miss E. F. How, Stainforth House, Upper Clapton, E.

"April, 1884.

" Date of dream, night between June 20th and 21st, 1883. Age 28.
Health perfect. [The form of these sentences is due to the fact that
the information was filled in on a census-form (Vol. I., p. 304).]
The dream was so vivid that I described the details to my mother ;
it was of a child being buried alive by two men servants. I asked
its name, and was told it was a Fitzgerald, infant son of the Knight
of Kerry. The impression was most distressing, and remained all day, and
returned in a less degree whenever anything recalled the dream. At the '

1 Mrs. Alfred Wedgwood, of 20, Shorncliff e Road, Folkestone, dreamt that she heard
of the deaths of Mr. Hayward and M. Rouher the night before she saw the announcement
of them. The names were in the papers of the day Tbefore she had her dream, but she is
confident that she had not seen them. If telepathic impressions, caught from an idea
which is abroad, are possible (p. 365), this might be a specimen. On the other hand, it
may only illustrate the indefinite scope for accident that dreams afford.

426 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

time I knew absolutely nothing about the Knight of Kerry : I did not
even know whether he was a married man.

" On June 25th, I saw in the paper an announcement of the death of
the only child of the Knight of Kerry, on June 21st. [We have verified
the date in the Times and in Burke's Peerage.] This at once recalled the
dream, which I had entirely forgotten.

" I accounted for this coincidence by imagining my eye had uncon-
sciously fallen upon some paragraph mentioning the illness of the child,
but I am told there never was any announcement of the kind.

" All the details of the dream were wrong. " E. F. How."

In answer to inquiries, Miss How adds : —

" The whole of the dream, with many details now faded from my
memory, was told to my mother on the morning of June 21st. She
laughed at the dream, but on June 26th she greeted me with : ' I have
seen in a paper that the Knight of Kerry did lose a child the night1 of your
dream ; you must have seen that it was ill.' I had then also seen the
announcement in the paper.

" This winter I met some friends of the present Knight of Kerry, and
from them heard that there had been no notice in the paper excepting of
the birth of the child."

Asked whether she had previously known that the family name of the
Knight of Kerry was Fitzgerald, Miss How replies that she had, having
once met a member of the family abroad.

The following is from Mrs. How : —

" Stainforth House, Upper Clapton, London, E.

"April 25th, 1884.

"On the morning of June 21st, 1883, my daughter related to me, in
detail, a vivid dream she had the night before.

" I remember perfectly that when she came down in the morning she
said she dreamt that the infant son of the Knight of Kerry, a little Fitz-
gerald, was being buried alive ; that she struggled to save it, but felt no
surprise at the people trying to bury it alive. A few days afterwards I
saw the death of a young son of the Knight of Kerry in the paper, the
date being June 21st. " FRANCES A. How."

[The accuracy of Mrs. How's recollection is shown by her further
mention of some details of the dream, which Miss How had previously
communicated to us, but had not in any way recalled to her mother's
memory.]

In connection with death-imagery of a gloomy kind, I may remind
the reader of the passage in Guerzoni's Garibaldi (Florence, 1882,
Vol. I., pp. 398-9), in which Garibaldi describes his dream of a funeral
procession, of a corpse with his mother's face laid down beside him,
and of his impression of an ice-cold hand, remaining even after he
was awake. " On that day," he continues, " and in that hour, I lost
my parent, the best of mothers." The dream occurred on March 19,

1 We cannot discover that it was mentioned in the papers that the death took place
in the night.

in.] DREAMS. 427

1852, when Garibaldi was on a voyage to China ; and there is nothing
to suggest that he knew his mother's death to be impending.

I will conclude the list of symbolic dreams with the example
mentioned in Vol. I., p. 368, where a particular dream, not in itself
suggestive of death, has on a noticeable number of occasions more or
less nearly coincided with deaths affecting the dreamer. I need not
repeat the remarks already made as to the total inconclusiveness of
most alleged specimens of this class, and the proneness of mankind
in general to remark and record the few hits, and not the thousands
of misses.

(460) From Mrs. Burton, Longner Hall, Shrewsbury,

" February, 1883.

" I am a healthy woman, in a responsible position, neither dyspeptic,
hysterical, nor morbid, and my mind is chiefly occupied with matters of
business. I am 41 years of age, and a grandmother.

" Ever since I was 21, the following dream has occurred with certain
varieties : — In my sleep I see suddenly, by a brilliant light, a naked
infant, either lying in or falling into a bath. Sometimes I see a person
standing by the bath whom I recognise, which gives me a clue on waking,
by which I know in what family the death is likely to take place ; at other
times I only see the infant and the bath ; then I know I shall hear of a
death within 12 hours, and I suffer anxious suspense until I hear the news.

" I should weary you if I related all the strange fulfilments of this
dream, but am willing to send you a few instances with dates, &c., if you
wish it.

(1) " On the night of the 29th of January, 1873, I dreamt that I saw
a baby in a bath. When the postbag came in the morning, I said to my
husband, ' Please don't open it yet, I am sure there will be news of a
death in it, but I can't tell whose ; none of our friends are ill, and the
dream was so vague.' He laughed, and proceeded to open the bag ; it
contained a letter from the Rev. S. A., announcing the death of his only boy.
[Here the dreamer had no knowledge of the illness of the person who died.]

(2) " On the night of April 24th, 1877, I dreamt that I saw an infant
in a bath. On the 25th, I heard that my cousin, B. C., had died on the
24th. [Here the dreamer had no knowledge of the illness of the person
who died.]

(3) " On June llth, 1877, while asleep in a chair, I dreamt that I
saw my husband's aunt, Mrs. B., looking at an infant in a bath ; she was
dressed in white, with a strong light round her. She died in the evening
of that day. [Here the dreamer knew of the illness of the person who died.]

(4) " Before my husband's death on November 17th, 1880, I had my
warning dream. I seemed to stand in deep mourning watching an infant
in a bath. [Here the dream preceded the death by more than a day.
The husband had been long ill, but his immediate death was not expected.]

" C. S. BURTON."

We find the above dates of death in cases 1, 3, and 4, confirmed by
the Times obituary, and that in case 2 by the Register of Deaths.

428 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

[Mrs. B. has kept a diary of her dreams, which shows that she has
had several dreams of accidents which have never taken place. She
thought that she had never had the dream of a baby in a bath without
receiving news — usually within 12 hours or thereabouts, and never later
than 2 days after — of the death of a relative, friend, or at least acquaint-
ance or servant ; but on more minute inquiry, it proved that in one case
there had been an interval of as many as 1 1 days. She promised to keep
in future a more carefully written record ; but writing in March, 1886, she
says that she now seldom dreams, and seems to be losing her sensitiveness.
She has no idea why the telepathic impressions of death (if such they could
be considered) should associate themselves in her mind with these particular
images.]

§ 5. I now come to the large class of " clairvoyant " dreams — this
word being used in the restricted sense explained in Vol. I., pp. 368-9.
The perception still varies greatly both in clearness and amount, and
often foreign elements are introduced ; so that this class differs rather
in degree than in kind from the last. The cases are so numerous that I
must present some of them in an abridged form ; but I shall suppress
no item which could be regarded as a weak point in the evidence.

I will first give a case which, though second-hand, rests on the
authority of two persons to whom the dream was narrated before
the reality was known. The whole labour bestowed on the present
work would be amply repaid if by its means half-a-dozen such
incidents, which would otherwise have been left to float, like this one,
on the uncertain tide of human memory, obtained immediately and
for ever the security of a written record.

(461) From the Bishop of Bedford, who, in January, 1883, corrected for
us the account that appeared in the Spectator for Sept. 9, 1882, after com-
paring it with the written record. The account was written down, he
says, " not less than from 20 to 25 years after the occurrence, probably a
few years later still. I asked my father and aunt to verify and correct
my account, which they did."

" Stainforth House, Upper Clapton, E.

" January, 1883.

" When my father, Mr. W. Wybergh How, was a young man, he left
his home, which was at Isell, near Cockermouth, to settle in Shrewsbury
as a solicitor. In the year 1819 he revisited Cumberland, staying of
course with his father, the Vicar of Isell. He and his sister, Miss Christian
How, who was to return with him to Shrewsbury, had arranged to leave
on a certain Monday, and to spend that night with a former governess,
who was married to a Mr. Forrest, and lived at Everton. On the Sunday,
after church, Mr. and Mrs. Wybergh, my father's uncle and aunt, who
lived at Isell Hall, told them they had invited a party of young people
for the Monday night, and would not hear of their leaving that day.
They were persuaded to stay, and wrote to Mrs. Forrest, although fearing

m.] DREAMS. 429

there was no post which would reach her sooner than they themselves
would on Tuesday night. The party was a very merry one, a large
number of their old friends being there. The only fact I need name at
present is that a Miss Harriet Fenton, a young lady who had lately lost
her brother and was in deep mourning, sat most of the evening alone upon
a sofa, not joining in the amusements of the rest.

" My father and his sister reached Everton by the coach on Tuesday
night ; and when they explained the reason of their delay Mrs. Forrest told
them, when the coach had come in the night before without them, she had
gone to bed, and had dreamed it was a party for which they had stayed, and
that she had dreamt of being there. A little later, while they were at
supper, she said she must tell them her dream, as it was so wonderfully
vivid ; and first of all, she told them who were there. As she had been
governess at the vicarage, and knew all the neighbours, this excited little
surprise. She then, however, went on to describe the most minute cir-
cumstances of the evening, saying she had seen some of them dressed up
in fancy dresses and dancing about in them ; that they had got a dirty
round table, which she had never seen before, into the drawing-room, and
were eating something out of a bowl upon it (they had a syllabub, and
someone saying it must be eaten from a round table, one was sent for from
the kitchen) ; that old Mr. and Mrs. Wybergh and old Mr. and Mrs. How,
who were playing at Boston in the inner drawing-room, came in and asked
what they were doing, finding fault with them for having brought in the
dirty kitchen table ; that the old people were not allowed to come to the
round table, but were told they might taste what was in the bowl ; with
other minute details. Mrs. Forrest had told her husband the dream early
in the morning in bed, and had afterwards told her children, one of whom
corrected her in her narrative, saying, ' Oh, mamma, you told us so-and-so
this morning,' the correction being the true version of what had occurred.
My father and his sister were very greatly startled and astounded as Mrs.
Forrest went on, but were still more so when she ended by saying, ' And
I was sitting all the evening on the sofa, by the side of a young widow
lady ! ' This was the only mistake ; but years afterwards I met this lady
(then Miss Fenton), and we spoke of this wonderful dream ; and she told
me it was not so very far from being all true, for she was at the time
engaged to be married, and did marry very shortly, and her husband died
on their way out to India directly afterwards.

" I have only to add that the letter written to Mrs. Forrest arrived the
morning after, i.e., on the Wednesday. The narrative was (with the one
singular exception mentioned) a perfectly accurate account of all that took
place to the minutest details, and the dream appears to have been dreamt
at Everton at the very time of the occurrence of the events at Isell. My
father and my aunt, before their death, verified and vouched for the above

Stoi7- " W. WALSHAM BEDFORD,

" Bishop Suffragan for East London."

(462) From Mr. J. Ridley, 19, Belsize Park, N.W., who tells us that
he has had no other impressive dream of death.

" March 5th, 1885.

" Whilst staying at Mrs. M.'s in June, 1867, on the night either of
June 3rd or 4th, I had a vivid dream that I saw an old friend [name

430 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

given in confidence] lying dead with a wound in his head — noting the
colour of his hair and other particulars. I told Mrs. M. of this dream,
and later in the day we heard that the friend I had seen in my dream had
actually been killed by a blow on the head, in a fall from a conveyance,
on the night before the dream. The wound was on the opposite side of
the head from that seen in my dream.

" The scene of the accident was some miles from the house where I
was staying. " J. R."

Mrs. Mawson, of Ashfield, Gateshead, with whom Mr. Ridley was
staying at the time of the dream, was asked by Mr. Ridley's daughter,
at our request, if she remembered anything of the dream. She replied on
March 3rd, 1885 :—

" I remember very distinctly Mr. Ridley telling me his dream, and
how strongly it impressed me at the time. I remember that your papa
had the dream, and spoke of it before the news of J. M.'s death reached
him, but I cannot call to mind exactly what was the cause of death — in
the dream, I mean ; but I think your papa thought he saw him injured by
a fall from his horse or conveyance. I think he told me that he saw him
lying on the ground injured, and his wife mourning and weeping over
him, but I cannot be certain of the exact particulars, only I know that
the dream was singularly like what in reality took place on the very
same night. " E. M."

Miss C., a resident in the village where J. M. lived, was asked if she
could discover the exact date of J. M.'s death. She replied : —

" West Boldon.

" March 4th, 1885.

" To-day I saw E. M. (now Mrs. H., the daughter of J. M.). Her
father died on June 4th, 1867. On the morning of that day, as Mrs.
M. M. was on her way to Hylton, she found him lying insensible at a
turn of the road. He was in the habit of driving furiously. It was sup-
posed that in the dark he had not managed the corner, and so was thrown
out. He never recovered consciousness. " A. C."

[If Mr. Ridley's dream was on the night of the 3rd, it must have been
within a few hours of the accident ; if it was on the night of the 4th, it
may still have been within 12 hours of the death.]

(463) From Miss Augusta Gould (now Mrs. Temple), the narrator

of case 441, above. ,, -p. IT n^

"December 19th, 1883.

" When a child, I dreamed of places I was not likely to see, and
when by chance I did see them they were exactly as my dream foretold. l

" A curious dream happened one night, I believe in the spring of 1880.
I saw the bedroom of an old lady friend, with blood 2 all about the floor and
the window broken. I told my brother I was afraid there might be
murder for the sake of money. He laughed at my fears, but the next
Sunday, on his return from taking service at Lord H.'s private chapel,

1 This experience has pretty often been described ; but it would be impossible to attach
any importance to it, unless the dream had been written down or described in detail
before the reality was seen.

2 Compare cases 135, 221, 432, 466, 467.

in.] DREAMS 431

near the home of the lady, he informed me of a great alarm her friends
had had. They found her insensible in bed, one day, covered with blood,
as was the floor of the room, and the window broken. Afterwards, she
related that she had awaked in the night, finding her face and chest
streamed over with blood, and a suffocation oppressing her ; had got out
and tried to open the window, but being faint and unsteady had run her
hand through the small panes, then turned and fainted before she could
get into bed again, and after doing so knew nothing more. I may add
that the doctor said this serious attack had saved her from apoplexy."

In answer to inquiries, Miss Gould wrote: —

"January 3rd, 1884.

" I cannot remember if the accident to the old lady was on the same
night as my dream of it ; but certainly the dream was two or three nights
before I heard of the accident.

" My brother, to whom I mentioned the dream beforehand [i.e., before
the news of the event], died in 1881."

(464) From Miss Barr, Apsley Town, East Grinstead, the narrator of
case 111. "April, 1884.

"When I was in Singhur, in 186-, I had a very strange dream. I
saw, as in a small disc of light1 — something like a magic-lantern picture,
only in small — the following scene : — The inside of a small hill tent,
lighted (from above, apparently — the whole scene was in vivid light) on
the floor, close beside a dhurrie (a small Indian carpet), and, between that
and the door, a very large black scorpion, and entering by the door the
figure of a man, an intimate friend, now dead. The vision was apparently
of but momentary duration, and disappeared before I could see more. I
made a note of the fact, with the date, in my diary. On the return of this
friend, a few weeks afterwards, from his hunting expedition, he volunteered
the information that they had been much pestered by insects of all kinds,
and added that one night he had gone into his tent and found there ' a
whopping big black scorpion.' The black scorpion is not quite so common
as the ordinary or pink scorpion.

" I asked him what that night was, and he told me. I remember that
he fixed the exact date, either from having made a note of it, or from some
other incident having occurred on that same day. I never told him of my
dream."

[Miss Barr stated in conversation that she and her sisters had satisfied
themselves at the time that the days corresponded.]

(465) From Mr. J. W. Beilby, of Beechworth, Victoria (mentioned
above, p. 226), son of Dr. Wm. Beilby, well known in Edinburgh forty
years ago. The account was first printed in the Harbinger of Light,
Melbourne, August, 1879.

"In 1849, I was on a certain night sleeping at an inn in the Portland
district, being there mustering stray cattle to deliver, with my station
sold, when intending to return to Scotland. I dreamt I was, with other*
members of my family, at my father's death-bed in Edinburgh. Every-
thing said and done was vividly represented, but I wondered that my
father was not in his usual bedroom. Several months afterwards news of

1 Cf. case 220, and the remark which follows it.

432 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

my father's death, on that very night, reached me ; but it was not until a
sister arrived in the colony, later, that every minute particular was
corroborated, and I learned the reason for his occupying the bed I saw
him die in, in his dressing-room.1"

Mr. Beilby tells us that he seemed, as if in a vision, one of those around
his father's bed; and that the night was May 30th. We find, however, from
the Edinburgh Cowrant that Dr. Beilby died on June 7, 1849.

[Such an error of date is not important, in a case where the narrator
has no separate recollection of the date of his own experience. But at
this distance of time it is impossible to be sure that the degree of
coincidence was accurately ascertained, or that it has not become more
exact in memory. To our request for corroboration, Mr. Beilby replies : —
" My sister is too remote to refer to as to facts stated in my last letter."
This is not the only instance in which the idea of writing a letter to a
distant country has seemed to paralyse an informant's power of assistance.]

(466) From Mr. B. Lomax, Curator of the Brighton Free Library and
Museum. "January, 1883,

" In 1860, I took my newly married wife to live on the Fryer's Creek
Diggings. Her mother, Mrs. F., lived in Melbourne, so that mother and
daughter were 73 miles apart. After a few weeks, having to attend at
the Survey Department, I returned alone to Melbourne, intending to pass
a week at my father-in-law's house. On the third day, Mrs. F. (who, by
the way, was a cousin of the late John Oxenford) came to me in tears,
and entreated me to return, as she had -last night dreamed that she had
seen her daughter covered with blood, and led to bed by two women.
Moved by her anxiety, I returned that night, and found the fact as she
had stated. A sudden fright, caused by the violent entry of a drunken
woman, had brought on a miscarriage, and she had been assisted and
tenderly nursed by two neighbours. « BENJAMIN LOMAX."

With this dream may be compared the following hypnotic vision.

(467) From Beitrage zu den dwell Animalischen Magnetismus zeither
bewirkten Erscheinungen, by W. Arndt (Leipzig, (1818), pp. 76-9.
Arndt held a post to the name of which the nearest English equivalent
is Secretaryship to the Royal Prussian Superior County Court. The
percipient was a Madame S., 19 years of age, who had been suffering
from hysterical attacks, and was hypnotised by Arndt during a period of
some months, in 1812.

" During a magnetic stance, the sleeping patient, who had just before
been quite gay, all at once began, without any perceptible cause, to utter
lamentations, to wring her hands, and to weep. When I asked her the
reason, she said, ' Ah, God ! Ah, God ! my father ; my good father ! he is
dying.' ' How do you know that ? ' ' Ah, God ! don't I see it ! he is

1 We have a very similar case from Mr. Alex. B. Burton, of 4, Baronsfield Road, St.
Margaret's, Twickenham, who, on January 7th, 1880, dreamt very vividly of his father's
death as taking place in a room quite different from that whicn he believed him to be
occupying at the exact hour. He got out of bed, and marked the time by his watch as
a little past 4.30. The facts and the time of the death exactly corresponded ; and Mr.
Burton's mother testifies that the dream was described to her before sne mentioned the
actual change of room. The death of the father was, however, known to be imminent ;
and the case is therefore not numbered as evidential.

in.] DREAMS. 433

losing a terrible amount of blood ! Ah, he is dying, dying ! ' After
trying in vain to pacify her and rid her of this fancy, I woke her. She
opened her eyes with the brightest smile, and all gloomy thoughts had
vanished. To divert her still more, I conversed with her on various
subjects ; then, as I had broken into her sleep, I hypnotised her again.
Before long the disquieting picture again appeared to her. To put an end
to her grief, I. again woke her. Her joyous look on waking showed that
she was quite unaware of what she had just been describing."

On her being put to sleep a third time, the vision was repeated, and
her lamentations were heart-rending ; but this time she was allowed to
sleep, and she gradually became more composed. She woke at last with
the exclamation, " Alas ! " For the rest of the afternoon she was very
melancholy, without being able to say why ; and neither Arndt nor her
husband (the only two persons who had been present) revealed to her
what had passed. Next day she had recovered her spirits.

Her father was at the time 70 German miles away. His last letters
had assured her that he was well ; nor had she the slightest cause for
anxiety on his account. But some weeks later Arndt found her much
cast down ; and on inquiring the cause, was told that at about 3 p.m. on
the day of her strange experience (which Arndt says that he had noted),
her father had slipped while descending into the cellar, and the cellar door
had fallen on his breast, which caused violent haemorrhage, and very nearly
cost him his life. " So the fact which could not by any possibility have
been suspected, actually happened, at the very hour at which the patient
at a distance perceived it."

(468) From the Rev. F. Teasdale Eeed (Unitarian Minister), Cole-
hill, Tamworth. "October, 1884.

" I had an uncle who, after spending 33 years on board ship, left the
sea, got married, and settled down near London. His only son, Jack,
and myself were constant playmates, and for a short time school-fellows
also. [Jack ran away to sea.] Months passed by and no news came. At
length — perhaps it was 12 or 18 months afterwards — my thoughts were
again directed to my missing cousin. It was in this way.

" One Sunday morning, my father invited me to go with him to see my
uncle and aunt. On the road he told me that during the night he had had
a most remarkable dream, and he wished to test it as far as he could, for
he was strongly persuaded that it would be fulfilled. At the same time he
urged me to notice the date, and preserve in my memory the details as far
as possible. I may just say, in parenthesis, that we continued our journey,
paid 'the visit, but found that nothing had been heard of my cousin. The
dream, so far as I can recollect it at this distance of time, was somewhat
as follows : — The scene is in a foreign port (guessed at the time to be
Spanish). On board a British man-of-war that is anchored there a young
man (my cousin Jack) is giving instructions to some men at work in the
rigging. He is apparently dissatisfied with what they are doing, for he,
hurries up, makes some slight alteration, and then descends. A rung of
the rope ladder gives way as his foot touches it, he falls backward, head
first, and dies instantly. The surgeon hurries to the spot, examines the
body, but leaves it, as he can do nothing there. Then arrangements are
made for the burial. The coffin is taken on shore, some of the officers and

VOL. II. 2 F

434 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

men accompany it, and it is solemnly lowered into the grave. There the
dream ended.

" Some time after, my father (he had already ascertained the time it
would take for a letter to come from the Spanish coast to England) asked
me one morning if I still remembered his strange dream. He then made
me repeat it to him. After that he said : ' Well, if there is anything in it
your uncle will have heard something about it by this time, let us go
and see him.' When we reached the house we could see at a glance
that something had happened. My father at once asked if there was
any news yet of Jack. Yes, that morning's post had brought a large
envelope bearing the Lisbon post-mark. It was written by one of the
officers of a man-of-war that was then anchored at Lisbon, and its
purpose was to make known the death of my cousin. After a very kind
and favourable notice of Jack's general conduct and abilities, it gave
full details of his death and burial. Those details tallied exactly with
the details given in my father's dream, and it occurred the very date
of the dream. I was perfectly amazed. I inspected the letter and could
not see any point in which there was the slightest contradiction or even
divergence. Of course my uncle was then informed of the dream.

" F. T. R."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Reed adds on October 28, 1884 : —

" I can quite understand your desire to verify, as far as possible, every
statement made, but unfortunately I shall not be able to furnish much
corroboration. I have just a little ; what there is I will place before
you. I found the enclosed ' inspector's certificate.' I see it corrects my
story in one point, and confirms it in another. I said that the event
happened about 32 years ago ; this document is dated 1847, i.e., 37 years
ago. At the time of writing the paper I did not sufficiently think over
the question of time. I would add that the family consisted of my uncle,
aunt> — who are both dead — my cousin John (of whom I have written), and
his sister, who is still alive in Australia. She may be able to furnish
more particulars. [We have written several letters to this lady, which have
not been answered.] However weak it may be in collateral evidence, I am
positive as to the fact of the dream, and that I have fairly represented
it in its essential points."

The inspector's certificate shows that John Tabner, seaman, died at sea,
on board H.M.S. " Canopus," on the 24th of April, 1847. In the Navy
List for June, 1847, we find the ship reported as " off the coast of
Portugal."

[In the absence of an independent account of the details of the
death, and of written notes of the dream, we cannot assume that the
coincidence of detail was so close as seems to be remembered. Clearly
there would be a difficulty in explaining the closing scene of the dream
as telepathically produced, though the dream may naturally enough have
taken that course. Mr. Reed mentioned in conversation that there had
been a very strong bond of affection between his father and Jack. He
was himself 1 1 years old at the time.]

(469) From Mr. W. Noble, J.P., Forest Lodge, Maresfield, Uckfield.

" September 8th, 1882.

" The Baroness van Lynden (my mother-in-law) had a maid who

in.] DREAMS. 435

subsequently lived with Mrs. Noble and myself as housekeeper, and died
in this house after 35 years' consecutive service in the family; her name
was Elizabeth Gowling, and she came of a most respectable stock of the
farming class from Appleby, in Westmoreland. She left Westmoreland
when she was young, and had not been near it for a good many years,
when the very curious event occurred which I am about to relate.

" I must say here, that when living in Appleby, Gowling had known a
woman, by sight, whose name, I regret to say, I have forgotten, but who
lived in a suburb called Bongate. They had in no sense ever been friends,
nor had any communication passed between them, or any mention of the
woman's name ever been made to Gowling by any one, after she left her
native county.

"Well, one morning she came down, as usual, to dress her mistress,
and, in obviously a very nervous and excited state, told her that she had
just had such a terrible dream that she could not get it out of her mind.
She had, she said, dreamed that this Bongate woman had gone to a drawer,
taken out a piece of rope, proceeded to an outhouse, and hanged herself,
and that her daughter had come into the outhouse and cut her mother
down. My mother-in-law, of course, pooh-pooh'd the whole affair, told
Gowling not to be silly, that dreams were all nonsense, &c., &c. But a
week or two afterwards Gowling received a local newspaper from some one
of her Westmoreland friends, which contained, inter alia, an account of an
inquest on this very woman ; who, on the night in which the dream
happened, had proceeded to an outhouse and hanged herself, and had been
cut down by her daughter. « WILLIAM NOBLE."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Noble says : —

" It was some considerable time after it happened that I first heard of
it ; but I have done so, without the smallest variation, repeatedly, both
from my mother-in-law and from Gowling herself."

In conversation with Mr. Podmore, Mrs. Noble gave an account which
precisely corresponded with her husband's, and stated that she herself —
then a young girl — had heard Gowling describe the dream on the morning
after its occurrence.

From the Coroner of the district, who has kindly made inquiries, we
have learnt the name of the woman who committed suicide, and the fact
that the occurrence took place about 40 years ago ; but his and our
endeavours to trace the exact date have failed.

(470) From Mr. Henry Maitland, Balmungo, St. Andrews.

"December 28, 1885.

" On the 16th of August, 1820 — it was the anniversary of his wedding
— my father took my mother and eldest sister to dine and spend the night
at the country house of an uncle a few miles off. I can see the trio now,
through the long vista of years, starting forLathrisk on the Irish car, my^
father in high spirits, and seemingly in perfect health.

" That night, my two sisters, who were left at home, one 20 and the
other 21 years of age, slept together ; and early next morning the younger
one awakened her companion, to tell her she had had a strange, unhappy
dream. She dreamed she was at Lathrisk with her father and mother ;
the family party were at dinner, and all went well till the servants had
VOL. n. 2 F 2

436 SUPPLEMENT, [CHAP.

cleared the table and withdrawn. My father, she said, then suddenly rose
and walked to the window, which he opened as if for air. She, in her
dream, went round and set a chair for him, putting her arm round his
shoulders to support him in what seemed a sudden faintness. My uncle
then came and supported my father, and the doctor soon arrived ; but
before then my father had breathed his last. Dreams, however impressive
to the dreamer, do not sound equally so in other ears, and this one was no
exception to the rule ; the elder sister made no account of it, and no more
was said on the subject.

" A few hours later, a messenger from Lathrisk brought the sad news
of my father's death, and the whole details of the closing scene were
strictly and literally identical with those of the dream, excepting only
that my eldest sister, who went with her parents, was the actor, in place of
the dreamer, who remained at home.

" My father was in his 50th year, full of health five minutes before he
died ; and the mental condition of the family was that of joy and hope-
fulness."

We find from the Edinburgh Courant that Mr. Maitland's father died
on August 25th (not 16th), 1820. Mr. Maitland explains that he knew his
father's wedding day to have been August 16, from an entry in a family
Bible, and that he was either told that the day of the death was the same,
or has himself, in memory, modified close proximity into identity.

In reply to inquiries, he adds, on Jan. 3, 1886 : —

" I am the sole survivor of my family. I was not told of the dream at
the time ; my age (7 years) precluded this. Let me give you the assurance
that both sisters concerned were women in whom, perhaps above most
persons, the precious quality of conscientiousness formed the basis of
character. In 50 years' close relationship to them, I never heard them
speak of a dream but the one in question ; and I don't believe either of
them was, either literally or metaphorically, a ' dreamer.'

" HENRY MAITLAND."

In conversation Mrs. Maitland told me that she also had heard the
incident described by the dreamer, her sister-in-law.

[It is needless to observe that no amount of scrupulousness on the
part of a witness can sufficiently guarantee unwritten recollections of a
long-past incident, involving some amount of detail. But the quality of
the evidence in this case is at any rate good second-hand ; and one can
hardly doubt that a coincidence of a striking kind occurred.]

(471) From Mrs. Sykes, who at the time to which the narrative refers,
was residing with her brother-in-law, the late Dr. Symonds, of Clifton
Hill House, Clifton, Bristol. « 1883.

" On the 6th of November, 1854, I want to see a poor woman named
Scott, living in St. Michael's parish, Bristol. She had a son in the army,
and his regiment was serving in the Crimea. As soon as she saw me, she
said, ' I know my dear boy is dead.' On my asking what made her think
so, she said, ' Yesterday morning I saw him quite plainly. He and others
were fighting and I saw him fall ; the men seemed in disorder and were
all in their shirt-sleeves. I saw Willie as plainly as I see you now.' I
tried to comfort her, saying how improbable it was they should be fighting

in.] DREAMS. 437

in their shirt-sleeves. ' It is true,' she said. ' I know he is gone, and I
shall always know the day and time, Sunday morning, November 5th, for
I awoke from the sight of this battle as the 8 o'clock bells rang out from
St. Michael's Church.'

" Quite late that day (the 6th) we heard of the battle of Inkermann
and that the soldiers were surprised early on the 5th, and had not time to
dress entirely, but fought in their shirt-sleeves. Young Scott's regiment
was there (I forget which). This poor woman never heard of her son's
death till some time afterwards, when the list of killed came out ; but
so convinced was she of the fact that she wrote his name and the date
of his death on a tracing (life size) of her soldier son, that she and her
other son had drawn on the wall, before he went to the Crimea. This
rude drawing I saw." l " M. A. SYKES."

[The Christian name William is probably incorrect ; among the non-
commissioned officers and privates mentioned by the London Gazette
in the list of Inkermann casualties, as killed in the battle or dying
of wounds very shortly afterwards, are three Scotts — John, Henry, and
Peter. The detail of the shirt-sleeves cannot be pressed ; but the sense
of reality must have been strong, to prompt the writing of the name and
date.]

(472) From Miss Weale, Nepaul, Croft Road, Torquay.

"January 26th, 1884.

"My mother was tired, and went to lie down, and fell asleep and
dreamt that her younger half-brother, Godin Ellis, had died in India,
and she heard in her dream hurried remarks about it, and heard some
one speak the name of the officer standing by. She awoke with such a
deep sense of its reality that, when my father came up to dress for
dinner, she proceeded to ask him to kneel down and say the prayers from
the Burial Service, for that Godin was dead. She proceeded to tell him

1 In connection with this case, I may quote a narrative which I refrained from giving as
evidence in the last chapter, on account of the pre-occupation of the percipient's mind with
her absent son. It was procured through the kindness of a Cambridge friend, Mrs. B.,
whose sister, Mrs. G., is the narrator.

" The following narrative was told to me by my aunt, Mrs. B. ; the son to whom it
relates is F. G. B. (68th Regiment), who fell at Inkermann on Sunday, November 5th,
1854. The narrative was told to me on Sunday afternoon, September 2nd, 1883, and
written down at the time. She had told me substantially the same narrative many years
before, though she did not like talking of it. My son, who was also present when the
story was told, read over my account, and pronounced it correct. I do not believe that my
aunt ever experienced any similar impression. I have known her intimately all my life, and
stayed with her for months together, and never heard her mention anything of the kind.
She "had always prayed that she might know at the moment if he were killed or
badly wounded. The 5th November was a Sunday. She was at Ruscombe Church, and
early in the service (while kneeling in the Confession) she had a sudden sensation ; she
saw nothing, but felt sure something was by her, and that it was her son. Her husband
asked her what was the matter, but she kept up, and did not leave the church. On
returning home, she said she was sure they would hear bad news. When the news did
arrive, some days later, they found he was shot at the very hour when she felt his presence
in Ruscombe Cnurch." •

Professor Sidgwick writes on September 5th, 1883 : —

"Mrs. B., who knew her aunt well, has just told me that she never heard of her
having any similar impression."

It is probable, from Kinglake's and Russell's accounts, that Lieutenant B. was killed
in the morning ; but at what hour is not known. For the form of the experience, compare
the subjective impressions described in Vol. i., p. 483. The case is eminently one where,
after the receipt of the news, the impression would be likely to assume in memory a
definiteness and uniqueness that did not really belong to it.

438 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

the name of the place, and the hour, and the name of an officer standing
by. She insisted on my father writing down the particulars, and he, to
quiet her, complied, and also joined her in saying the prayers ; but he
would not allow her to go into mourning, and disbelieved that it would be
found correct, because Godin had not intended going into the Madras
Presidency.

" In due course of time the news came, and full written particulars
from the officer whose name she had heard ; and it had happened at the
hour and day (allowing for reckoning), and in the little place, and as she
described it — an accident with a gun. He had only known the officer for
a few days, and the name was one unknown to my parents. My mother
had been certain her dream was, as she termed it, a vision of the true.
She was a very healthy, sensible, calm-minded woman.

" C. J. DORATEA WEALE."
In reply to inquiries, Miss Weale wrote : —

" My mother scarcely ever had a dream. The dream took place as far
back as in 1837, I think, but that very day she told us. All were told in
the house, and she was vexed because my father would not let her go into
mourning. The relatives who know, with me, of my mother's true dream
are foreigners, and scattered about the world, and I rarely write to them.
But it was all written down, and given to the Rev. Dr. Neale at the
time."

[Here, again, the occurrence is far too remote for certainty as to the
details of the dream. But some of the collateral incidents, e.g., about the
mourning, are such as would be likely to impress themselves on the
daughter's mind. We have done our utmost to trace the exact date of the
death, but without success.]

(473) From a lady who scruples for the present to allow the publica-
tion of her name, as a near relative has an abhorrence of the subject.

"May 26th, 1884.

" I cannot fix the date — it may have been about 18 years after my
mother's marriage — one morning at breakfast my mother told us she had
had a very strange dream. She had dreamed of Mrs. W., [a lady whose
house had been a home to her in youth, but whom she had not heard of
for years,] and Mrs. W. wanted to kiss her. My mother did her utmost to
prevent it, using all her force to push Mrs. W. away, and the strangest
thing of all was that she saw the inside of Mrs. W.'s throat, and saw it
most distinctly, and it was as black as coal. That was the entire dream.
About a week or 10 days after the dream (I cannot be sure of the
interval), a mutual friend sent us news of Mrs. W.'s serious illness, told us
that she was confined to bed, and suffering from a very uncommon disease
which had attacked her throat. After hearing this report there were many
talks of Mrs. W., but no way of gaining further information about her was
found.

" After another short interval, my mother told us she had dreamed
again. Mrs. W. was dead, everything about her was white, and there was
an immense amount of the colour somehow, but she was not in her
own room, neither did my mother recognise the room she was in as like
any of the bedrooms in the house. In two days the post brought us an

in.] DREAMS. 439

intimation of Mrs. W.'s death, which had happened during the night, on
the precise date of my mother's dream.

" About three months afterwards, we had a visit from a niece of Mrs.
W., a lady who had nursed her aunt during her last illness, and who called
to deliver a message sent to my mother from her friend before her death.
My mother told this lady of her two dreams, when the following explana-
tions were given us : — Mrs. W.'s illness was entirely in her throat, and its
most distressing symptom was an extreme difficulty of breathing, necessi-
tating having both windows and door continually wide open, as the only
means of alleviation, the weather at the time being bitterly cold. Immedi-
ately after Mrs. W.'s death, a daughter-in-law, a somewhat eccentric
person, arranged all details herself. For some unexplained reason she
caused the body to be moved immediately to a parlour downstairs. The
table in the room was covered with a white linen tablecloth, and the body
draped in white placed on it ; a sofa in the room was covered with a white
sheet, and every chair, and also every picture in the room was treated in
a similar manner. My mother said, ' I know the room — that was the
room I saw in my dream.' "

[This incident happened about 30 years ago, but the narrator has a
very clear recollection of it. She says that her mother dreamt a good
deal, and that many other singular coincidences had been noticed, but that
most of them were of a more trivial nature. Of course the second
dream can only be explained telepathically by supposing (in accordance
with Chap. XVIII., § 7) that a common interest in the dead woman
established a line of communication between persons who were strangers to
one another ; and it is not an example on which we should be disposed to
lay any stress. The first experience is more striking, as the detail about
the throat (both in the dream and in the reality) would be likely to be
remembered, and not likely to be unconsciously imagined.]

(474) From Des Hallucinations, by Dr. Brierre de Boismont (Paris,
1862), pp. 285-6. It is to be presumed that he received the account from
the dreamer herself, as otherwise his prefatory remark would have no
force ; and in an English translation of another edition of the work, the
narrative is followed by the words, " This statement was made to us by
the lady herself, in whom we place the most perfect confidence."

" Le fait suivant est un de ceux qui nous ont le plus frappe* parceque
la dame de qui nous le tenons e"tait un de ces esprits sense's et respectables
dont les paroles meYitent toute confiance.

" Mile. R., doue"e d'un excellent jugement, religieuse sans bigoterie,
habitait, avant d'etre marine, la maison de son oncle, De"sessants, meclecin
celebre, membre de 1'Institut. Elle e"tait alors sdparde de sa mere, atteinte,
en province, d'une maladie assez grave. Une nuit, cette jeune personne
reva qu'elle 1'apercevait devant elle, pale, de'figure'e, prete a rendre le
dernier soupir, et te"moignant surtout un vif chagrin de ne pas etre entoure"e
de ses enfants, dont 1'un, cure* d'une des paroisses de Paris, avait e'migre' en*
Espagne, et dont 1'autre e"tait a Paris. Bientot elle 1'entendit 1'appeler
plusieurs fois par son nom de bapteme ; elle vit, dans son reve, les
personnes qui entouraient sa mere, s'imaginant qu'elle demandait sa petite-
fille, portant le meme nom, aller la chercher dans la piece voisine ; un
signe de la malade leur apprit que ce n'e*tait point elle, mais sa fille qui

440 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

habitait Paris, qu'elle d^sirait voir. Sa figure exprimait la douleur qu'elle
e'prouvait de son absence ; tout-a-coup ses traits se de'composerent, se
couvrirent de la paleur de la mort, elle retomba sans vie sur son lit.

" Le lendemain Mile. R. parut fort triste devant De'sessants, qui la
pria de lui faire connaitre la cause de son chagrin ; elle lui raconta dans
tous ses details le songe qui 1'avait si fortement tourment^e. De'sessants,
la trouvant dans cette disposition d'esprit, la pressa centre son coaur en
lui avouant que la nouvelle n'dtait que trop vraie, que sa mere venait de
mourir ; il n'entra point dans d'autres explications.

" Plusieurs mois apres, Mile. R. profitant de 1'absence de son oncle
pour mettre en ordre ses papiers auxquels il n'aimait pas qu'on touchat,
trouva une lettre qui avait e'te jete'e dans un coin. Quelle ne fut pas sa
surprise en y lisant toutes les particularite's de son reve que De'sessants
avait passees sous silence, ne voulant pas produire une Emotion trop forte
sur un esprit dej'a si vivement impressionneV'

(475) From Mrs. Hubert, 16, Monmouth Road, Bayswater, W.

"December 26th, 1883.

" I shall relate to you a dream which happened to me several years
ago. I was then in Germany at Mayence, learning German in a school,
where I was employed as a teacher of the French language.

"One night I went to bed, very tired but without any particular
anxiety. I fell into a heavy slumber and dreamt of my mother. She was
in bed, lying ill, and thin ; her hands, almost transparent, were stretched
convulsively as if seeking for some object, whilst she moaned most
piteously in calling me by my name. In fact, she looked as if she were
dying. I recognised perfectly her bedroom, the furniture, &c. ; it was
dimly lighted by a candle, and close to the head of the bed, in a green
arm-chair, slept an old woman. I knew her also as a charwoman, who, as
it seemed, was acting as nurse. My mother in her desperate motions
succeeded in touching the shoulder of the old woman, who awoke with a
start, and asked her crossly what she wanted.

" 'My scissors,' said my mother in a feeble voice.

"'Whatforr

" 'To cut some of my hair. You shall give it to my daughter in
remembrance of me.'

" ' She does not want it, go to sleep,' answered the old woman, angry
at being disturbed. She pushed back my mother on the pillow and went
to sleep again, without noticing her agony, her prayer, to have some of
her hair cut. I could hear distinctly the voice of my mother becoming
weaker and weaker, but always plaintive, and supplicating the old woman
for her scissors. At last I heard nothing. I awoke in a frightful agitation;
it was 2 o'clock after midnight. I told my dream to some people. They
advised me not to think of it, as they said that dreams generally go by
contraries. But a few days after, I received the news of my mother's
death ; it had happened just at the time of my dream.

" LOUISE HUBERT."

Mrs. Hubert returned to France in a few weeks, and, on seeing the
nurse, reproached her with her conduct, and was convinced by her manner
that the charge was true ; but there was no further evidence. In con-

in.] DREAMS. 441

versation, she told me that she had no idea of her mother being ill ;
that the dream was quite unique in her experience ; and that the effect
on her was so strong that the persons she was living with had great
difficulty in persuading her not to start home at once. The incident
happened more than 20 years ago, and she has lost connection with her
native place in Lorraine.

[The case is first-hand, from a witness who, I am sure, desires to be
accurate ; but again the remoteness of date and lack of corroboration are
most serious defects, and the correctness of the details in the dream is
mere conjecture.]

(476) From Mrs. Drummond Smithers, Bridge House, Crookham,
Farnham, Hants.

" November 22nd, 1884.

" My father [Mr. Thomas Pickerden] was an architect and builder,
which obliged him to be about very early of mornings; and on Monday,
the 19th January, 1857, at 7 a.m., whilst on his way to see some of his
men, he fell, in a fit of some kind. That same morning I perfectly well
remember not falling asleep until after 2 a.m., having counted the clock
up till that hour, and wondering why I could not sleep, as I always slept
well at that time. As we breakfasted at 10 a.m. in those days, we were
not early risers, so probably it might have been 8 or 9 o'clock before I
woke. I cannot make a nearer statement, as I am not positive as to the
time ; but my dream was between the hours mentioned. It was that my
father had been taken suddenly ill in the streets of Hastings, that he was
put into a fly by two men, and taken home — when I woke. The dream
seemed to impress me very much. I tried not to think seriously of it ;
having dressed and breakfasted, still the dream haunted me. I could not
shake it off. When I spoke to my sisters-in-law, with whom I was stay-
ing (my then husband was their brother), they advised me to tell him,
which I did, and he at once granted my request of going on to Hastings.
He left me at Etchingham Station, and going direct to our home, Hawk-
hurst, he found a telegram there to the effect that my father was ill, and
that I was to go at once. I had by this time reached Hastings and
found my dream verified.

" The event occurring so many years back, not one witness is living.

"ANNIE SMITHERS."

In the same letter Mrs. Smithers says, " The dream preceded my
father's sudden illness some few hours ; " but the account shows that there
is no reason to suppose this.

In answer to inquiries, she adds : —

"29th December, 1884.

" In my dream I did not actually see my father fall, but was at the
spot just as the fly was going off, and saw distinctly there were two persons
inside the fly, but the back of one man who was holding my father pre-*
vented my recognising him ; the man on the box I distinctly saw, and
knew him as a flyman of Hastings, and he was the man who drove my
father on that fatal morning — for so it proved, as he never rallied from
that illness, never was out of his bed more than to have it made a few
times. He died 5th March, 1857. I never knew him to have an illness

442 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

previous to that, nor fit of any kind ; he always appeared a healthy strong
man. I am generally so free from dreaming that this one made a great
impression upon me at the time."

The Hastings News confirms March 5, 1857, as the date of the death.

[This case again is remote in date and uncorroborated ; but the
narrator is not likely to be wrong as to the fact of her taking a journey
on the strength of her dream, and finding it confirmed.]

(477) From Miss Morse, Northfield, Vermont, U.S.A., who was the
percipient in case 41.

"May, 1884.

" Often impressions of persons and places have come to me while
asleep, or when I seemed to be dreaming. For example : When our civil
war was in progress I corresponded with several soldiers. One of my
correspondents was Captain Fischer, a Dane, who had formerly been a
sailor, and roamed the world over. While the army of the Potomac was
lying idle, I dreamed of a strange place. The moon shone brightly on
newly-made streets, dotted with small white houses, arranged to impart on
the whole scene a picturesque daintiness. One of the little dwellings
especially won my attention. I stopped before it, exclaiming, ' How
beautiful ! I never saw anything like it. I wonder what it can be.' A
voice, which I did not recognise, replied, 'It is a Grecian temple.' ' Am
I, then, in Greece 1 ' ' No, this is an imitation of such temples as one
sees in Greece.' I awoke, and in a moment the clock struck 12. I could
not rid myself of the feeling that I had been to a new place, and seen
something real.

" A few days after, a letter came from Captain Fischer, in which he
minutely described the place I saw in my dream, explaining that the
soldiers, to pass the time, had laid out streets and avenues, and by many
ingenious devices had contrived to make their tents resemble houses. His
own tent, which was much admired, he had converted into quite a clever
model of a Greek temple, &c. Near the close he alluded to the brilliant
moonlight, and added : ' It is near midnight, and my men are asleep all
around me.' Comparing dates, I found I dreamed of the scene while his
pen was describing it."

In reply to inquiries, Miss Morse says : —

" The date of the dream was firmly fixed in my mind, because it came
the one night that I passed at the house of Mrs. Paine's father. I well
remember telling Mrs. Paine the dream in the morning. When I saw her
again I told her of Captain Fischer's letter, which was received after I
returned to W. Pv. Junction. Had the dream occurred at home I could
not have been so sure of the time."

Mrs. Paine, Northfield, Vermont, writes as follows : —

"May 24th, 1884.

" My testimony in regard to Miss Morse's dream in connection with
Captain Fischer, whom I know well, is a mere mite. I well recollect her
telling me the dream, which occurred while she was on a visit at my
father's, but whether she related it to me the next morning or later, I
cannot remember. She says she told me the dream at the time, and its

in. DREAMS. 443

singular verification afterwards, as she did not receive the letter from
Captain Fischer until after she returned to her home at White River
Junction — but so many years have elapsed that they are inseparably
connected in my mind. I only remember it in connection with the letter,
although I presume she is correct.

" LUCIA A. PAINE."

(478) From Mr. Latimer H. Saunders, St. Helens, near Ryde, who
was concerned in case 44.

" April 26th, 1884.

" While at school, I had a remarkably vivid dream of a fire, in which
it appeared my father's offices were destroyed, entailing upon him heavy
loss. So realistic did it seem to me that I related it to one of my school-
fellows (George A.) before rising. [This gentleman, however, cannot
recall the circumstance.] He told me in his quaint way that I was very
foolish to repeat a dream before getting up unless I wished it to come
true ; at which superstitious fancy I laughed, and told him there was no
fear of such happening in this case, as the fire I had seen in my dream was
not at my father's offices, 16, Mincing Lane, to which I had been in the
holidays, but at Messrs. Bailey and Co.'s offices, a large block of buildings,
No. 1, Mincing Lane Buildings, situate some distance away, and the only
thing connecting them with my father was that in my dream I saw his
name-plate on the entrance instead of theirs. A few days after, I heard
from my mother that my father's offices had been burnt to the ground,
and that unfortunately he was not insured, having only just removed into
new offices. I afterwards learnt that it was the block of buildings I had
seen in my dream that was burnt down on the same night ; and stranger
still, that my father had taken the very offices occupied by the firm I
mentioned, the only knowledge of whom that I could have had was from
seeing their name on the building, in passing to my father's offices when
I visited the City. « LATIMER H. SAUNDERS."

Mr. Saunders's father says, " The date [of the fire] was, I think,
November, or early in December, 1862." We find from the Times that
the fire took place on Dec. 9, 1862, breaking out shortly after midnight, in
Mincing Lane Chambers, and thence extending to other buildings.

[Mr. Saunders tells me that one of his brothers (Mr. Harris Saunders,
of Leacroft House, Staines) was, he believes, at the fire — which would be
in favour of the telepathic explanation ; but Mr. H. Saunders declines to
tell ]is whether he actually was present. The case is too remote for any
certainty as to the exact correspondence of date and detail.]

(479 and 480) Mr. Rowland Rowlands, of Bryncethin, Bridgend, has
given us the following dream-cases out of many impressions which he
believes to have been veridical. (See also Vol. I., pp. 252, 291.) He
was until recently manager of the Pen-y-graig Collieries.

"July 2nd, 1884.

" About 23 years ago, when I was taking a little rest, about 40
or 50 miles distance from Pen-y-graig, I saw a man named Edwin Gay
falling down from a slope on the surface to an old pit, which was covered
with old timber and full of water. But the timber protected him. I

444 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

instantly wrote a letter to caution them to take care, but when the letter
reached, it was too late, because the man had fallen, very likely at the very
moment I saw him going. I met Mr. Gay [within] the last fortnight, and
went over the facts with him.

" On one occasion, about 1868, when at the Pen-y-graig Collieries, I
had come from the works to my house, about dinner-time, 1 p.m., and
having been up all night had got into bed — when, just as I was dropping
off to sleep, and still between sleeping and waking, I saw the roof of the
stall belonging to a man named William Thomas moving, and the timbers
which supported it bending and breaking. I got up at once and ran off
to the colliery, just in time to meet William Thomas coming out of the
works, the roof of his stall having fallen in, just as I had seen it. My
vision must have taken place at the very moment of the accident. Wilh'am
Thomas is now dead.

" On another occasion, when in bed, between 1 and 2 a.m., I dreamed
that I saw the colliers, who should have stayed in the works until 5 a.m.,
putting away their tools and making ready to go. I hurried on my
clothes, told my wife what I had dreamed, and ran off to the works. I
found that the men were just about to leave, but had hurried back on
seeing the approach of my light. They wondered much how I had dis-
covered the trick which they had intended to play."

[This last case may probably have been due to some latent idea in
the dreamer's mind.]

I append some specimens of a rather numerous class in which
letters are alleged to have been perceived shortly before their
arrival. The following are instances which there is no difficulty in
accounting for telepathically. (See also cases 409, 433, 447, above ;
and cases 136, 137.)

(481) From Mr. Conquest, Mead House, Biggleswade.

" December, 1884.

" It was, I think, in October, 1869, that I dreamed that I received a
letter from an old friend, Rev. S. H. Ireson, then a curate of St. Thomas'
Church, Liverpool, and residing in Birkenhead, from whom I had not heard
for 12 months or more. His handwriting was very distinct, and it
stood out very clearly before me, as I read that his wife had presented him
with another little daughter. On reaching the bottom of the page, I tried
to turn over the leaf, but could not, and the effort awoke me. The vivid-
ness of the dream was such that on coming down to breakfast in the
morning, I said to my sister (now Mrs. Daniel, of The Elms, Biggleswade),
' I expect to hear from Ireson this morning, for I dreamed last night that
I received one announcing the birth of a daughter.' In a few minutes
the postman came, but there was no letter from Ireson. It came, how-
ever, the following day, and the first page seemed to be identical with the
one I had read in my dream. Towards the end of December, in the same
year, I think, I visited Ireson at Birkenhead, and, one day, happening to
mention the above circumstance to him, he said, ' I distinctly remember
writing you that letter — it was between 1 and 2 (or 2 and 3) o'clock in
the morning, and after I had written the first page, I went to bed and

in.] DREAMS. 445

finished the letter next day.' Ireson afterwards became Vicar of Barnolds-
wick, and died a few years ago. « FKED w CONQUEST."

Mrs. Daniel corroborates as follows : —

" The Elms, Biggleswade.

"December 17th, 1884.

"I perfectly recollect Mr. F. Conquest telling me of his dream,
respecting the birth of Mr. Ireson's daughter, previous to our receiving
information of the event, and have pleasure in adding my testimony in
confirmation of it. " T. F. DANIEL."

Mr. Conquest has antedated his experience by some months, as we
find from the Register of Births that his friend's daughter was born on
July 9, 1870. In conversation he informed me that he had had no idea
of the impending event ; and also that he does not dream much. Mrs.
Daniel described to me the place where she and her brother were standing
when he told her of the dream, and the arrival of the post immediately
afterwards.

(482) From Mrs. Paramore, 43, Shaftesbury Road, W.

" March, 1884.

" On the night of the 21st March, 1871, I woke from some distressing
dream, sobbing. My husband [since deceased] inquired what was the
matter. I told him I had had such a dreadful dream, something about my
Aunt Baker, but I could not remember any particulars. Towards morn-
ing, I think about 5 o'clock, I woke up again in great distress from a
similar, though more vivid, dream — something still connected with my
Aunt Baker ; but I told my husband I had received two letters, black-
bordered. When I got up, I felt unusually depressed, and kept saying to
my husband I could not shake off a dreadful feeling of wretchedness ; as I
was nearly always in excellent spirits, he was surprised, but our astonish-
ment was inexpressible when the post brought me two black-edged letters,
both in the handwriting of my Uncle Hubert Hutchings, my Aunt
Baker's brother. The envelopes were numbered 1 and 2 — the latter I
have found with the letters amongst my papers. No. 1 contained the
intelligence of my aunt's illness, of which until then I was unaware. The
other one, written shortly after, told me of her death. My husband and
myself were greatly impressed with this extraordinary circumstance — for
I never attached the slightest importance to dreams ; but this was un-
deniably a mysterious coincidence."

Mrs. Paramore sent the two letters — concerning respectively the ill-
ness and death — for our inspection. Both were dated the same day, 21st
March, 1871, and the black-edged cover in which one of them was enclosed
bore a dated stamp-impression of that day.

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Paramore writes on March 23, 1884 : —
" I do not at this distant date actually remember as to whether the two'
letters were black-bordered or not, but I distinctly dreamt they had
reference to my aunt, whose illness and death were announced the follow-
ing morning in the two letters I sent you. Whilst dressing, I frequently
remarked (before the post came in) to my husband how wretched I felt
about my dream, and that it was something about my Aunt Baker. I do

446 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

not remember any other very distressing dreams that have or have not
come true. "LEONORA E. PARAMORE."

In conversation Mrs. Paramore dwelt on the quite unique feeling of
distress which followed the dream. As to the particular feature of repeti-
tion, see Vol. L, pp. 357-8, and below pp. 700-1.

(483) From Mr. E. W. Phibbs, 84, Pembroke Road, Clifton, Bristol.

"February 10th, 1885.

"In 1856, living in Manchester, where I carried on the business of silk
and cotton manufacturer,! dreamed one night I saw a sheet of paper with
a written order upon it, unimportant in itself, from a house which was in
the daily habit of sending me orders — A. and S. Henry and Co. As I
saw it, it looked like a sheet of wet paper without any surroundings,
covered with writing. When I got to my place of business, about half-
past 9, my partner, who was always there before me, remarked that he
had a curious (from its insignificance) order from A. and S. Henry and
Co. I said, ' Before showing it me, give me a sheet of paper,' on which I
wrote out a part of the order — the upper portion — and remarked, ' I can't
repeat what is below, because it is smeared in the copying-press.' He
looked at me very much surprised, and produced the original, showing that
it was identical with my description.

" Thinking over the matter for some weeks, a difficulty presented itself
in the thought that, at the moment when I dreamed I saw it, the order
would be folded in an envelope, and not be an open sheet. Also, why
should the sheet appear wet ? At last I questioned the writer of the order,
without giving him any reasons, and on asking him to describe the daily
procedure of the business of writing such orders out, he answered that,
when he had written a number of such orders the last thing at night, he gave
them to the copying clerk, who was in the unusual practice of leaving all
these orders in the copying-book in the press all night. The first thing the
following morning, these would be put in envelopes and distributed through
the town. This at once explains the open and damp sheet of my dream.

" The order began in the ordinary form — ' Order for (500) pieces,' &c.
The words written down (before seeing the actual order) contained all
that was extraordinary in it. The smeared portion only contained further
particulars. « E. W. PHIBBS."

Mr. Phibbs' partner is dead. But Mr. Phibbs has forwarded to us a
letter, written to him on Feb. 18, 1886, by Mr. Fitzgerald, of 34, Marble
Street, Manchester, who heard of the occurrence at the time, completely
confirming the above account ; and Mr. J. Lang writes, from the Man-
chester Examiner and Times office, to the same effect.

In August, 1883, Mr. Phibbs had another curious dream, of seeing his
dog, who was not with him where he was staying, dying under a wall ;
and Mrs. Phibbs confirms the fact that this dream was narrated to her
immediately. It turned out that the event had taken place, and that the
dog was buried, by persons who were in some degree responsible for
the accident that led to its death, at (apparently) the hour of the dream.
But the dog was fond of climbing, and the case can hardly be numbered
as evidential.

I may conclude, in this connection, with the following complicated

in.] DREAMS. 447

case, the value of which it is difficult to estimate, but which at
least has a decided suggestion of genuine telepathy for anyone who
believes in the reality of that influence.

(484) From a lady who thinks that to allow the publication of her
name would involve a breach of confidence. She is a scrupulously con-
scientious witness.

" 1884.

"I make the following story as short as possible, suppressing many
details, and, of course, entirely changing the names of those concerned.
Miss Black, with whom I have been most intimate for many years, became
much interested in a Mrs. Gray. Although Miss Black and I are so in
sympathy that I may call our interests mutual, I, from the first, took an
unaccountable dislike to this particular friendship ; so much so that,
although I was always told when the friends met, no personal details were
ever told me. I never heard Mrs. Gray or her husband described ; I

never saw her writing. I believed her name to be , which is that of

her daughter.

" At the end of nearly three years I received an anonymous letter,
written in a hand evidently meant to be disguised, asking me to give the
writer some particulars of the disposal of Miss Black's property. The
reply was to be addressed to certain initials at a Post-office. I did
not reply. A short time after, I dreamt that I stood looking over the
shoulder of a lady writing a letter, and that she signed herself ' —
Gray.' The room door opened and a tall old man came in, and the writer
hastily put the letter away. Two days after, I received a second anony-
mous letter of the same purport, which I did not answer. I dreamt the
same thing again. Soon after (I forget how many days), a third letter
reached me, begging that I would never let Miss Black know what had
passed. I then wrote, saying the letters were destroyed, and that from
me Miss B. would never hear of the matter. A month or two after this,
while staying at my home, Miss B. and I were at church. An old man
sat near us who struck me as extremely like the figure I had seen in my
dreams. Miss B. whispered, ' That is so like Major Gray.' This impressed
me very much, and I afterwards found out that Mrs. Gray's name is
— , not — — , as I had supposed ; also that she has a great quantity
of almost white hair, which I have omitted to say was the only thing
I very distinctly saw about my dream-lady, as her face was hidden from me.

" In the course of her visit, Miss Black said, ' It seems to me your
dislike to Mrs. Gray has taken a more definite form ; you know something
about her.' I denied the knowledge, all being surmise, and I being most
anxious that Miss B. should not be wounded by the feeling that anyone
was speculating on what would happen in the event of her death, specially
as she is in delicate health. The subject was then dropped between us ;
but when, on a visit to her, we had been sitting alone and silent for some
time, her hand being on my shoulder, she exclaimed, suddenly, 'It is *
something about my will that makes you dislike Mrs. G. so much.' In
point of fact, I had at the time been thinking over the whole matter. I
then told her all, and it is now a matter of great regret I did not at once
send Miss B. the letters, as things then might have been cleared up. It
has been a cause of distress to Miss B. and myself, as it has made a breach

448 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

in her friendship with Mrs Gray, who denies all knowledge of the letters,
but refuses to meet me and discuss the aflfair. I need trouble you no
further, nothing more of interest, from a psychological point, having
occurred."

Referring to the above account, " Miss Black " writes, on October 5,
1886 : — " I can corroborate the facts therein contained."

In answer to inquiries, the narrator says : —

1. "After receiving the first anonymous letter I did suspect its author
to be Mrs.- Gray. Before this I never had the least suspicion that her
interest in Miss Black was a mercenary one, and I have been at a loss to
account for feeling so assured she was the writer, without there being any
evidence to favour the idea.

2. "I am quite sure I recognised the old man in church as being like
the man in my dream before Miss B. spoke of the resemblance to Major Gray.

3. "I am quite sure I never saw Major G., and I have not the slightest
remembrance of having heard any description of him.

4. "Previous to Miss Black 'reading' what certainly were my thoughts
about Mrs. Gray, we had made some very small experiments in thought-
transference, with, however, too slight results to submit to the S.P.R. In
these experiments I was the percipient ; my ' willing ' had no effect what-
ever on Miss Black. We discontinued our experimenting as I found it
exhausting. I think it is clear that a ' sympathetic rapport ' exists
between us, as once it was ' borne in upon me ' with inexpressible power
that she was in some distress. The impression seized me suddenly at a
certain hour, and no effort would dispel it. The news reached me next day
that Miss B.'s sister had been taken worse at the time, and was dying.
She had been ill, but not seriously so, and the last account I had received
was very good. When we are together we have often answered unexpressed
thoughts.

5. " I am very sorry I made no notes whatever of the incident, never
having been in the habit of keeping a diary, and I cannot be at all accurate
as to dates. [The narrator has however told us privately what were the
months in which the various incidents occurred. The first was less than 4
years ago.]

6. "I do not remember ever having dreamt more than once [i.e., having
had repeated x] a dream in which any one besides myself has appeared.

" Not having any idea that Mrs. Gray's name is , in fact being

impressed with the idea that it was , does it not strike you as a very

curious coincidence that I should have dreamt that I saw the true signa-
ture ? The real name [communicated in confidence] is a rather uncommon
one. I have never known more than one person bearing the same.

" I quite forgot to say that Miss Black writes that she does not
remember her hand being on my shoulder, but that I was sitting so near
as to touch her ; my own impression still is that it was so."

In conversation the narrator told Mr. Podmore that, when she told the
whole story to Miss Black, the latter brought down a bundle containing
many letters from various persons, and that she (the narrator) without
difficulty picked out a letter of Mrs. Gray's, from the resemblance of the
writing to that seen in the dream.

i See p. 418, note.

IV.]

CHAPTER IV.

" BORDERLAND " CASES.

§ 1. THE most convenient mode of arranging the cases in the present
chapter will be, not by the character of the experience narrated —
visual, auditory, and so on — for it happens that a large majority are
visual ; l but by the character of the evidence — first-hand or second-
hand, recent or remote.

I will begin with some cases, first-hand or on a par with first-hand
(Vol. I., p. 148), to which the chief objection, from an evidential point
of view, is their remoteness of date.

(485) From the late Mr. Robert Henry Dix, 63, Lanark Villas, Maida
Vale, London, W. « February 2nd, 1884.

"In 1836, when a very young man, I had become engaged to a
young lady ; but I decided to leave England and try my fortune elsewhere,
and wait until I should be able to establish myself, and could then send
for my intended and be united. Of course we were to keep up a regular
correspondence.

"I left England and went to St. Petersburg, where I had some
friends, and very soon after my arrival there I got an appointment on
an estate in the South of Russia, belonging to a rich and influential
nobleman. In the course of a year I succeeded in obtaining a very
good position, and could fairly hope to be enabled to marry in the course
of the next spring. In the meantime, the correspondence with my in-
tended continued very regularly. All at once it ceased, and for some time
I had received no letters from her. I wrote to one of her family, and
was informed that my intended was taken seriously ill, and had gone to
Jersey to some friends there, hoping that the sea air and change of
climate might be beneficial to her. This naturally unsettled me very
much, and I became depressed and low-spirited in consequence. One day
I remember I was particularly so. I had been very much occupied during
the day, and towards the evening threw myself on the sofa in my sitting- '
room, and dropped off to sleep. It might have been an hour or so that I
had been asleep, when, suddenly awaking, I observed at the foot of the

1 The cases which were exclusively auditory are Nos. 496, 497, 506, 507 538 ; and
an auditory impression was a prominent element in cases 489, 495, 498, 508, 509, 513, 519,
520, 522, 526, 527, 528, 539, 540, 547.

VOL. II. 2 G

450 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

couch a sort of bluish vapour,1 which seemed to fill up the end of the
room, and what seemed to me a shadowy form appeared to come out of it,
which gradually took the form of a female ; the features bore the exact
likeness of my intended. I was now fully awake. I raised myself on
the sofa, and exclaimed, ' Louisa, is that really you ? What has
happened ] ' I received no answer, and in a few seconds the apparition
was gone, and seemed to melt away into the vapour, which also dis-
appeared. I still supposed that I had been dreaming, but I could not
shake off the impression this apparition had made upon me.

" I wrote to my friends in England, saying that I feared my intended
was dying or dead. I received in answer that my fears were too well
founded, and that the poor girl had died of inflammation of the brain, on
the same day, and about the same time, as I mentioned having seen the
apparition. " R. H. D."

In conversation, Mr. Dix explained to Mr. Podmore that he could
not give the precise date of the apparition ; it occurred some time in the
autumn of 1837, between 6 and 7 p.m., when it was dusk, but not yet
fully dark. He made no written memorandum of the occurrence, but told
one or two friends in Russia on the following day. When he received the
letter announcing the death, he noted that it took place on the same day
as the vision, but he never learned whether the hour exactly corresponded,
only that the death took place in the afternoon.

All those who could give corroborative evidence in this case are
either dead or dispersed, so that they cannot be traced. None of the
letters are preserved, and no one is living of Mr. Dix's own relations who
could attest the receipt of his letters.

Mr. Dix was certain that he had never had any other experience of
hallucination. At the same time, it must be noted that he was at the
time in a state of distinct anxiety respecting \i\sfiancee.

We have more to rely on here than the mere recollection of the
experience ; this receives, so to speak, a point d'appui in the
recollection that a letter was written in consequence. Similarly, in
the next two cases, and in others that follow, we have the recollection
that the phantasm was immediately described and commented on.
In respect of many of these borderland visions, I may remind the
reader that the percipient's certainty of having been completely awake
at the time, though not conclusive as to the fact, is in itself quite
sufficient to distinguish the experience from an ordinary dream.

(486) From the late Mrs. Lever, of Culcheth Hall, Bowdon, wife of Mr.
Ellis Lever, well known in Manchester.

" May 14th, 1884.

" When at Ashton-under-Lyne, in my father's house, and being about
14 years of age, I was lying awake in bed, and my sister, Anne, sleeping
by my side. It was nearing the dawn at morning, when I saw my cousin,
Mary Tinker, come to my bedside, and she laid one hand on the pillow

1 Compare cases 193 and 194, and see Vol. i., p. 526, note.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 451

near my sister's head, while her eyes were uplifted, as if in prayer. (My
cousin Mary was particularly attached to my sister Anne.) She was in her
nightdress, which was frilled down the front, and a nightcap, also frilled ;
and I saw her dark-brown eyes as distinctly as possible. I was so afraid
that I shrank under the clothes ; but then, reflecting that I had done
nothing to grieve her, and no reason to be afraid, I resolved to speak to
her. But on removing the clothes, she was gone, and not knowing where
she could have gone to, I concluded that it must have been her spirit.1 At
breakfast, the same morning, I mentioned what I had seen to my father
and brothers, and to my sister Anne. They said I must have been
dreaming, but I was quite awake, and assured them that this was the case.

" The next day a letter came stating that my cousin Mary had died,
and it was ascertained that her death occurred at the very time at which I
had seen her apparition. This coincidence convinced the members of my
family that I had seen my cousin, as I assured them I had.

" CATHERINE LEVEE."

Mrs. Lever's daughter writes, from Cambridge House, Monmouth : —

"June 4th, 1884.

" I am staying with my mother's sister [Anne], who distinctly
remembers about her cousin Mary. "ADA LEVER."

Mrs. Lever, herself, however, says, " My sister only just remembers
my mentioning Cousin Mary, and she cannot give me the date."

(487) From a lady, Mrs. H., who prefers that her name should not
be published. « 1333

" When I was a child of 11 years of age, a very singular thing
happened to me, which is well-known to my family, and impressed itself so
vividly on my memory that I can still, though now a grandmother, recall
every circumstance.

" One night I awoke in a great state of fright, thinking someone had
touched me. I saw distinctly, standing by my bedside, my brother, but I
was terrified to see that he looked very terribly strange and altered, as it
struck me, like a dead person, though at that time I had never seen
anyone dead. I was also very astonished at seeing that he seemed
dripping wet, his clothes wet and stained, his hair dripping, and he stood
with his eyes fixed on me. In my terror I called out ' Alick ! ' (his name),
when the figure immediately vanished.2 I jumped out of bed, running
through the door, which was always left open, into the next room, my
governess's, telling her of what I had seen, and in my alarm, getting into
her bed, where I remained that night. She tried to laugh away my fears,
saying I must have eaten something that had disagreed with me, and that
what had passed was a nightmare, and forbidding me to mention it to my
grandmother, under whose care I was living, she being an old Scotch lady,
and superstitious, and that it might upset her. Nothing, therefore, regard-
ing the circumstance was in any way placed on record. •

" About three months afterwards, as I was reading aloud to my
governess in the same sitting-room with my grandmother, the Indian post
arrived. She made the remark, ' How singular ! No letters, only a news-

1 See p. 48, note.

2 As to the sudden disappearance on speech, compare case 540, and see p. 91, note.

VOL. II. 2 G 2

452 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

paper,' which she began reading. After a little while she dropped the
paper with the exclamation, ' Oh, my God ! ' My governess ran to her,
and presently read my brother's death by drowning in a quicksand in the
River Sone, near Sonepore, in Bengal. He was marching with his regiment ;
they were encamped on one side of the river . bank, another regiment on
the opposite side. This regiment, in which my brother had a young friend,
had asked him to early breakfast, about 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning ; and
the native who was showing him the way across afterwards deposed he
heard a struggling all of a sudden, looked back, and saw my brother and
his pony floundering in the quicksand, with which the river is full, and of
which it is supposed the coolie had forgotten to warn him. Instead of
throwing my brother a rope or stick to catch hold of, the man, in a great
state of fright, ran back to the camp to give the news ; but by the time
help arrived it was too late, and my brother was quite dead when the body
was recovered.1 This happened March 21st, 1845. In Bengal by that
month the sun is well risen by 5 o'clock, or at all events quite broad light,
and being in advance of us some six hours, the time at which he was
drowned would tally with my seeing him during the night at home.

" M. C. H."

From the only public notice of the death that we have been able to
discover — a letter quoted by Allen's Indian Mail from the Bengal Hurkaru
of March 4, 1845 — it appears that Mrs. H.'s brother was drowned in
the Sone when returning one morning to his regiment, having spent the
night with another regiment on the other side of the river, and that he
was buried on Feb. 23. It is thus likely enough that the accident occurred
on Feb. 21. The March 21, in Mrs. H.'s account, cannot be correct.

Mrs. H. adds the following incident, which is perhaps worth giving
in connection with the former one ; but it is possible that the daughter
who was in the same room with her called out in her sleep.

" My eldest daughter had come out to us to Calcutta, and she happened
for the time to be sleeping in my bedroom. Early one morning, December,
1870, a few days after her arrival, I woke suddenly, hearing her, as I
thought, calling out, ' Mamma, mamma,' in a very strained sort of voice,
but, to my surprise, found she was sound asleep. About 24 days after-
wards, we got the news that my second daughter, a girl just 1 4, then at
Dover with a relative, had scarlet fever very badly, and in the delirium
attending kept only calling out, ' Mamma, mamma.' She recovered ; so
this shows, as so many cases of the same kind do, that it is not only at the
moment of the spirit's departure these manifestations occur ; but I think
they only do so in cases where either very strong attachment exists, or to
people whose temperament is of the rather nervously sensitive breed, and
I am so in many ways ; for instance, I have the most extraordinarily keen
hearing."

The narrator states that she has never experienced any hallucination
of a purely subjective kind.

(488) From Mr. William Garlick, F.R.C.S., 33, Great James Street,
Bloomsbury, W.C.

"Between 6 and 7 in the morning of August 29, 1832, when lying in

1 This chapter and the next contain a good many cases where the death of the agent
was by drowning. See p. 26.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 453

bed, half asleep and half awake, I was suddenly startled by perceiving the
form of my brother George, then absent from home, standing beside me.
The room was quite light, and my recognition of the figure was complete
and clear. He looked at me, and then seemed to fade slowly away.1 My
brother, who had a specially warm affection for me, was at that time a
sailor on board the merchant ship, ' Eliza,' bound for the East Indies. I
had no reason to suppose anything was wrong with him, nor was he
specially in my thoughts. The vision, for I felt certain that I was awake
and not dreaming, made a very strong and painful impression upon me,
so much so that the family where I was staying asked the cause of my
troubled looks. I told them what I had seen, and at my hostess's (after-
wards my mother-in-law) request made a note of the occurrence.

" Months afterwards we received the intelligence that my brother
had died at Baroda, of dysentery. The date and hour 2 of his death, as
nearly as could be calculated, coincided exactly with that of his appear-
ance to me at Stroud (Gloucester). I am of a calm and unimaginative
temperament, and have never had any similar experience before or since.
The coincidence was well-known to various members of my family, but
I do not now remember that I mentioned the matter to anyone else at
the time. " WM. GARLICK."

Mrs. Garlick writes, on Nov. 18, 1884 : —

"I was present at the breakfast table on the 29th August, 1832, when
my mother, Mrs. Humpage, questioned Mr. Garlick on the cause of his
unusual gloom and quietness. He then told us that he had seen his
brother — who was at that time at sea — in his bedroom an hour or two
before. My mother answered, ' You will be sure to hear something, so
note the date.'

" Some months afterwards I remember that a letter came for Mr.
Garlick, forwarded from his mother, announcing the death of this brother
on that day, the 29th August. I heard of this, of course, as soon as the
letter was received. " L. GARLICK."

Mr. Garlick has never had any other hallucination. In conversation,
he explained to Mr. Podmore that the figure remained in his sight,
apparently, for about 10 minutes; but the length of time, in such circum-
stances, is apt to be greatly exaggerated. He has a very vivid recollection
of the features, but cannot recall the dress. He infers from this that the
dress was that which his brother usually wore, as he would certainly have
noticed and remembered any unusual detail in the costume. He was about
18 years old at the time. The " note " referred to was a mental note only,
but he is confident of the accuracy of his memory. He showed Mr. Pod-
more the entry of the death, with the date, in his family Bible.

We have not been able to verify the date of death, as it has been
impossible to trace the " Eliza."

(489) From Mrs. Nind, Midleton House, Westcombe Park, Blackheath.,

"May 14th, 1883.
" On a Good Friday morning, many years ago, I had been awake early,

1 See p. 97, first note.

2 This word, as Mr. Garlick has subsequently explained, is a slip. The hour of death
was not mentioned in the letter which conveyed the news ; so that no calculation could
establish a precise coincidence.

454 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

and finding it too soon to get up, was lying in bed, not asleep, when a
figure stood by my bedside, in fact, my father-in-law, an old captain in
the Royal Navy ; he spoke to me a few words l and disappeared. I was so
startled that I called my husband (since dead), who was asleep, and told
him what was said. I immediately got up and told my mother and sister
[since deceased], who chanced to be staying with us. Now, what makes
this story seem strange was that my father-in-law had died the night
before, suddenly. We did not get the news before the afternoon of
Good Friday, as he was residing at Bridgnorth, in Shropshire, 16 miles
from a railway. I saw him in the early morning, I count about 8 hours
after his death. The case was no dream ; and the fact of my having
mentioned it before I heard of the death of my dear father-in-law made a
strong impression on all the family."

Asked if this was her sole experience of a hallucination of the senses,
Mrs. Nind replied in the affirmative.

We find from the Register of Deaths that Commander Philip Nind
died of heart disease on March 25, 1853 — which was Good Friday, not
the day before it. Probably the death took place in the early morning,
and the coincidence was closer than Mrs. Nind supposed.

(490) From Mr. Harold Lafone, Hanworth Park, Middlesex, a cousin

of the percipient, Lady C g, who endorses the account.

" 1884.

" About the year 1849, an apparition was seen by Lady C g,

then Miss Gale, under the following circumstances : —

" She was living at the time in her father's house at Grately, in
Hampshire. One night, on awaking suddenly from sleep, she saw the
figure of a young man, apparently attired in his night shirt, standing at
the foot of her bed. She was naturally much surprised, and inquired who
he was, and what he wanted ? He replied that he was the ghost of John

Dowling, and Lady C g states that, as he spoke, she distinctly saw the

initials J. D. marked on the edge of his nightgown. At this distance of
time she will not venture to give the exact words of the conversation
between them, nor to describe the exact appearance of the figure or its
manner of departure. It disappeared, however, immediately after reveal-
ing its name.

" She mentioned the circumstance to her family at breakfast the next
morning, but was inclined to regard it merely as a strange and very vivid
dream, until, on driving the same afternoon to the neighbouring town of
Andover, she heard there for the first time that Mr. John Dowling, a
young solicitor of the town, had died on the previous night, as far as she
could judge about the time when the apparition was seen by herself.

Lady C g knew Mr. John Dowling by name and sight, and had

recognised the likeness of the apparition to him, but she had never
met or exchanged a word with him, nor had she the faintest idea that he
was ill."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death took place some
years earlier than Lady C— g supposed, on Nov. 3, 1845.

1 The words were, " Aggy, there will be a child in the family before this day 12
months." This event actually happened, rather unexpectedly; but the idea of it may
probably have been latent in the mind either of Mrs. Nrnd herself or of her father-in-law.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 455

[I have seen a letter, dated Dec. 19th, 1873, from Lady C. to Mr. H.
Lafone, in which she says that her husband objects to her signing the
account. She says, "It is all true as far as I can remember at this
remote period," but adds that she has a certain dread and dislike of the
subject.]

(491) The following two letters were written by the late Mrs. Clarke,
wife of the late Mr. Thomas Clarke, of Bishopton Close, Ripon, to her
stepson, Mr. William Fowler Stephenson. He gave them to his cousin,
the Rev. J. T. Fowler, of Bishop Hatfield's Hall, Durham, who handed
them on to us. „ October 17th, 1872.

" On the morning of my father's death, between 4 and 5 o'clock, I saw
a sort of shadowy light at the foot of my bed, and half arose to look at it.
I distinctly saw my father's face, smiling at me.1 I drew the curtains
apart, and still saw him looking fixedly at me. I awoke the girl who was
sleeping with me, and asked her to draw up the window blind. I then
asked her if she saw anything. She said, ' Nothing. It is too dark.' I
fancy I saw the vision for fully five minutes, and then all was dark again.2
The face was bound under the chin, as usual in death, and the cloth seemed
stained, but not so deep as iron-mould quite. On looking at my father's
corpse, after returning to Hull, I told an old friend, who was with me,
that it was just so he looked at me, except that the cloth was discoloured.
She at once said : ' Then he did come to you, that's certain, for the cloth
was stained, and I changed it after daylight.' It was within a few minutes
of his death that I saw him, and he was asking God to bless me. He was
asking for me continually. " M. C."

In reply to a request of Mr. Stephenson's for more particular informa-
tion on certain points, Mrs. Clarke wrote : —

•'October 19th, 1872.

" I had been in Harrogate for some weeks, and was confined to my
room from a feverish cold 3 which caused restless nights. It was thought
necessary for one of the maids to sleep with me, so I asked her to draw up
the blinds. This was a little after 4 o'clock in the morning of the llth of
November, 1846. On that same day, about 9 o'clock, by post, I received
the enclosed letter, being the first intimation I had of my father's illness.
He was taken ill on the Sunday ; they wrote to me on the Monday, and
he died on Tuesday morning. I was then 23 years of age. My sister,
Christiana, and a woman-servant attended to my father. A faithful old
friend, Mrs. Dible, came as soon as possible to do what was necessary on
such occasions, and it was to her that I mentioned what I had seen. She
explained that, in the excitement of the moment, they had used what had
been the bottom of an old blind, which, as soon as it was daylight, she
saw was stained, and changed it herself. I can never explain what I felt
on that day, if it can be called feeling. They said I was like marble to
look at, and like ice to touch." ,

The letter referred to by Mrs. Clarke, announcing the illness of her
father, was enclosed. Two persons had written to her on the same sheet —

M i MI Qf Case 315, where an appearance of bright vapour preceded the more definite
impression. The expression " shadowy light " recalls the " bright shadow " of case 251.

2 See p. 459, note.

3 See p. 162, first note.

456 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Mr. Jubb, a friend of the family, and her brother, Mr. J. Rollit, a solici-
tor in Hull. Mr. Jubb's letter runs : —

"Hull, November 10th, 1846.

" MY DEAR MATILDA, — If you wish to see your dear father alive, you
must come immediately you receive this ; he is hot likely to survive long.
—Yours truly, " WM. JUBB."

We find from the Hull Advertiser that the death took place on
Nov. 11, 1846, as Mrs. Clarke asserts. She made a mistake (of no im-
portance) as to the days of the week. The llth was a Wednesday, and
the letter to her was written on Tuesday.

(492) From Mrs. George Grant Gordon, Milton of Kikaroch, Nairn,

N-R1 "April 17, 1886.

" I am most happy to accede to your request, and send you an account
of what I experienced at the time of my father's [Colonel Sibbald's] death.

I remember it as clearly as if it happened only yesterday. It was early
on the morning of the 31st May, 1857, while I was lying perfectly awake
in bed, that I saw my father suddenly standing at the foot of my bed. I
recognised him immediately from his likenesses. [He had been for years
in India.] He was dressed in regimentals, stanching a wound in his
breast with a pocket-handkerchief. Two other officers in regimentals
were beside him, whom I did not recognise.2 I did not reveal this vision,
or whatever it can be called, for some time to the friends who had charge
of me [Dr. and Mrs. McBeth], for fear of being laughed at [for] what they
always termed my ' fancies ' ; but when they did hear of it, they noted it
down.

" For 3 months we received no news from India, owing to the dis-
turbed state of the country ; but when the letters did arrive, the news
tallied exactly with what I had seen. It was on that very day my father
had been shot twice, on his way to the parade-ground. On being missed,
two officers went in search for him, and found him lying wounded.

" E. T. GORDON."

Colonel and Brigadier Hugh Sibbald, C.B., was almost the first victim
of the Indian Mutiny ; and at the date of his death there had been not the
slightest anxiety on his account in England. We find from Allen's Indian
Mail that the rising at Bareilly, where he was in command, took place at

II a.m. on May 31, 1857, and that he was shot in the chest by one of his
orderlies, while riding to the parade-ground, and shortly afterwards
dropped dead from his horse. Allowing for longitude, it will be seen that
the coincidence was probably extremely close.

In answer to the question whether she has ever had a hallucination of
the senses on any other occasion, and to other inquiries, Mrs. Gordon
writes : —

" I cannot remember having actually seen anything else, though I
have always had strange presentiments. The friends who had charge of
me in those days are both dead, and they are about the only persons I

1 This case was procured through the kindness of Mr. Andrew Lang, who gave a
fairly correct, though fourth-hand, version of it in his article on "Apparitions," in the
Encyclopedia Brittanica.

'2 As to the appearance of more than one figure, see Vol. i., pp. 545-6.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 457

can remember who could have known of the vision before the sad
news arrived. I was perfectly clear as to the date ; as the previous day
I had been to a pic-nic ; and that date they all remembered being the
30th of May [a Saturday]. It was the following morning I saw my
father. The first news of the Mutiny that reached us must have been
much later. I had no reason whatever to feel the least anxious about my
father."

We have received an account which substantially agrees with the above
(but omits the detail of the two other officers), from Miss Lang, ef Hugh-
enden Cottage, High Wycombe, Bucks, to whom the occurrence was
described in 1868, by an aunt of Mrs. Gordon and sister of Colonel Sibbald.

We cannot assume here that the experience was in any degree a
clairvoyant vision of the scene, or that the two strangers who appeared
were anything more than a subjective addition of the percipient's.
For there is nothing in the contemporary account to suggest that
Colonel Sibbald was not riding alone ; and if he dropped from his
horse, as described, he must have been lying dead, not merely
wounded, when others approached.

(493) From Mrs. Fitzgerald, 14, Windsor Terrace, Kingstown, Ireland.

"January 22nd, 1884.

"More than 25 years have elapsed since the memorable event
occurred, which stands out as a landmark in my memory. My husband,
David Fitzgerald, and myself were later than usual in retiring to rest on
the night in .question. After leaving my dressing-room, in getting into
bed, I found my husband firm asleep, so crept in quietly. It was then
near 12 o'clock. I did not sleep for some time. Between that and 3
o'clock my husband awoke me, saying, ' Sarah, stop Fred, don't let him
go.' I immediately got up, went round to the door of the dressing-room
to close it, as I firmly believed there was someone in the room, but found
it closed. On lighting the candles, my husband was sitting up in the bed
greatly disturbed, saying, ' Did you not see Fred 1 ' In order to make
light of the matter I said ' It was only a dream.' He looked at me, not
as if he were convinced with what I said. Next day I drove to town, to
know what time Fred last wrote to his brother, never saying a word of
what had occurred the night before. Time passed ; on the arrival of the
news of the death of poor Fred I was so thrown off my usual discretion
that I exclaimed to his brother William, ' Oh, I know when he died, for
he was with his father that night.' "S. M. FITZGERALD."

Mrs. McKern, of 53, George Street, Limerick, writes as follows : —

"January, 1884.

" About 25 years ago, David Fitzgerald, Land Agent, of Limerick (my
grandfather), at that time between 65 and 70 years of age, was residing*
at Richmond, his private dwelling, about half-a-mile outside the city.
The other occupants of the house were his second wife, Sarah Fitzgerald,
and his step daughter, Mary Hunt.1 He had, besides, many sons and

1 Since married to a Mr. French, R.M. ; but we learn from Mr. McKern that she was
away at school at the time.

458 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

daughters, the youngest of the former having gone to Australia. One
night (hour not known to narrator) he was awakened from sleep by the
howling in front of the house of a favourite dog — spaniel or retriever — of
the absent son, Frederick. (Note, in Ireland, the howling of a dog is
looked upon as a sure sign of death in the immediate locality.) He awoke
his sleeping partner, and said, ' I am sure there is something wrong with
Freddy ; do you not hear the way the dog is howling ? ' She endeavoured
to soothe the old man, and went to sleep again, when she was again awoke
by him in a sudden, not to say violent, manner. He was in a highly
excited state, exclaiming, ' I saw Freddy ! I saw Freddy ! He stood at
the bottom of the bed, with the curtains drawn aside, and looked at me.'
The next morning a note was made of the occurrence, and the following
mail from Australia brought news of the lad's death, which the narrator
believes to have corresponded with the father's vision.

"S. E. McKERN."
In answer to inquiries, Mrs. McKern adds : —

" I could not possibly recollect from whom I first heard of the
occurrence, as I was very young at the time ; but I have often heard it
spoken of by different members of the family. I do not remember having
had any conversation on the subject with Mrs. Fitzgerald."

[The incident of the dog's howling seems not unlikely to have been
imported into the story ; and it will be observed that neither it, nor the
dramatic repetition of the experience, occurs in the more authentic
account. We do not know that the coincidence of day was anything
more than a conjecture.]

(494) From Mr. H. Atkins, Office-keeper at the Royal Marine Office,
40, Spring Gardens, S.W. (originally published, with a nom de plume, in
the Daily Telegraph, for October 20, 1881).

" In the year 1849, I was serving in H.M.S. ' Geyser,' on the east coast
of Africa, and in company with H.M.S. ' Brilliant,' anchored in Tamatave
Roads, Madagascar. The following facts I can vouch for. Some of our
officers were dining on board the ' Brilliant.' A boat's crew were ordered
to be ready at six bells (11 p.m.) to fetch them on board. The lights were
out on the lower deck, and everything quiet. A messmate (T. Parker) and
I, belonging to the boat, were sitting in the mess, abreast of the cook's
galley, and opposite each other, he with his arms on the table, and face
resting on them, and, as I thought, fast asleep — when all at once he
jumped to his feet, declaring that he saw his mother cross the deck in
front of the galley, and was very much excited. I pointed out to him
that it was quite impossible, as his face was towards the table, at the same
time laughing heartily at him for being so foolish. Our schoolmaster, Mr.
T. Salsbury, was lying awake in his hammock close by, and in the morning
he made a note of the circumstances, putting down time and date. On
our arrival at the Isle of France, some time after, Parker received a letter
from home, stating that his mother died that very night. I am no believer
in ghosts, but think this a very remarkable coincidence."

Mr. Atkins, from whom we first heard on February 12th, 1884, has
added the following additional information : —

"It is quite possible that Parker may have raised his head from the

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 459

table, in which case he would have a clear view of the spot over which the
apparition was said to walk. It was very dark, and a real person walking
in the same place would have been unrecognisable.1 There was not the
slightest doubt, apparently, in Parker's mind ; for he did not examine the
figure, but called instantly that he saw his mother, and then commenced
sobbing and crying. These sounds drew the attention of Mr. Salsbury,
the schoolmaster, and caused him to note the time of the circumstance.
For the three or four months that elapsed before the Isle of France was
reached, Parker ' moped about,' and would not be cheered. In comparing
the date of the death with that of the apparition, allowance was made for
the difference in time, and the two events were found to exactly corre-
spond by the schoolmaster."

[It would be a quite impossible task, Mr. Atkins says, to hunt up any
of his old shipmates, but if he should meet with anyone who can corrobo-
rate his account, he has promised to communicate with us. The school-
master and Parker are dead.]

(495) From Mr. George Waddington, of 26, Bagdale, Whitby, men-
tioned above (p. 366).

" Passing the night at an inn in Nevada City, California, I dreamt, or
awoke, by the door of room where I was sleeping being opened, and the
figure of my great-aunt, Mrs. Beaumont, of Wetherby, Yorkshire, observed
standing in what was her usual dress, as worn in 1842, and heard to say,
' George, George.' A note was made at the time, the date being the 28th
July, 1851. She died early that morning.

" She had the night before been the subject of my thought, on travelling
late in the dense darkness of the forest. " G. W. WADDINGTON."

We find the date of death confirmed by the Leeds Mercury.

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Waddington says that he had last seen his
aunt in February, 1842 ; and that the dress of the apparition was "out-
door walking costume, the bonnet being a prominent part of it." He
adds : — " The note was made on the back of a letter, and used for reference
when the news arrived ; but this was not kept."

The letter announcing the death is missing ; but at our request
Mr. Waddington applied to his mother, and she informed him that
she arrived at Wetherby, in response to a summons, at 2 p.m. on
July 28th, and found that Mrs. Beaumont had died at noon, which
would be 4 a.m. in California. Mr. Waddington's experience took place,
he tells us, " about dawn " ; and the coincidence was thus probably very
close, though he himself, through not allowing for longitude, had imagined
that there was an interval of about 8 hours. He adds that the halluci-
nation is unique in his experience.

[This is a case in which it seems probable that the percipient projected
the image in the dress which had remained associated in his mind with
the original. See Vol. I., p. 546.]

(496) From the late Mr. G. Wadsworth, Aston, Birmingham.

"October 21st, 1882.
" About 30 years since, I became acquainted with a young lady residing

1 1 have mentioned (Vol. i., p. 551) that visual phantasms of both the subjective and
the telepathic class are often more clearly seen than a real figure could have been in the
same circumstances. Compare case 250, and the note thereon (p. 72).

460 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

at Shrewsbury. This friendship continued for many years, although for
a long time we saw each other but rarely, her health gradually failing.
One morning early I was startled by hearing the stairfoot door open, and
Maria called me distinctly twice, ' George, George ! ' So plain was this
that I at once answered, ' Yes, Maria, what is it ? ' and went down to the
sitting-room to her, only to find the whole a dream or an illusion. Next
day I received a letter informing me of her death that morning.

" G. WADSWORTH."

[Mr. Wadsworth's death, which took place soon after this account was
written, has prevented us from obtaining further information.]

(497) From Mrs. Fagan, Bovey Tracey, Newton Abbot. « 1882

"Early in the year 1857 — I think in the month of April — I was
awakened one morning by my sister (whom I supposed to be some
hundreds of miles away) sorrowfully saying, ' Oh, Sally, Sally ! ' Thinking
she must have arrived unexpectedly by dak, and had met with some great
trouble on her journey, I turned and spoke to her, but she was gone.
Rousing my husband, I asked him to go and see what was the matter, but
she was nowhere to be found. That morning, at that hour, my sister
received the news of the sudden death of her eldest boy at school, and she
wrote and told me that her first words were, ' Oh ! Sally, Sally, wishing
you were here ! ' I have no recollection of ever having heard the voice of
any other one, not actually present — certainly never before this.

"SARAH H. FAGAN."

We find from a notice in Alleris Indian Mail that the death occurred
on April 18, 1857. The sister's letter is unfortunately lost ; and she can-
not trust her memory sufficiently to corroborate the account.

The next case is an interesting example of death-imagery,
occurring in what is represented as a waking experience (Vol. I.,
pp. 539, 547 ; and compare case 404).

(498) From Mrs. Chermside, Regia House, Teignmouth.

" August, 1884.

" E. B. was engaged to be married to H. A. D. He was a surgeon in
the army. Want of means on both sides delayed the marriage, and he
suddenly came to her one day to say ' good-bye,' as he was ordered to take
troops to Canada. He sailed, and she heard of his safe arrival. He spoke
of his return in the following spring. One night, being 28th December,
she saw him enter her room about midnight. A light seemed to shine
about him j1 but he was clothed completely in grave clothes. She sat
up in bed and said, 'Oh ! H., why are you so strangely dressed ? ' He said,
' Do not laugh; this is my new uniform.'2 He then departed as he came.

" She lay trembling all night, and weeping sadly. Next morning she
refrained from telling her family, as they were opposed to her marriage ;
she, however, unburdened herself to me. I tried to persuade her it was
only a silly dream ; however, the idea that her lover was dead was most
firmly fixed in her mind. A month after, she received the news of his

1 See Vol. L, pp. 550-1.

2 Compare cases 547, 568, 639, 654. The complex form of hallucination in which
there is an interchange of remarks with the phantasmal figure occurs equally in purely
subjective cases. See Vol. i., p. 476, and compare p. 588 below.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 461

death on that very night, and that the last word he uttered was her name.
The whole thing took such possession of her that she slowly faded away,
and died about two years afterwards."

The following addition is from the notes taken by Professor Sidgwick
during two interviews with Mrs. Chermside in September, 1884 : —

The occurrence was in the winter of 1845. It was on the next
morning that E. B. told Mrs. Chermside of the appearance. She (E. B.)
was quite sure that it was not a dream ; and had no doubt that her fiance
was dead. She heard the details of his death within a month or so — as
soon as letters then came from Canada — from one of his brother officers,
and also from his sisters ; and then wrote to tell Mrs. Chermside that he
had died the night that she saw the apparition.

[We have exhausted every means open to us to discover an official or
newspaper record of the death in this case. We do not know how to
explain this failure ; as Mrs. Chermside is certain that she has given
us Mr. D.'s name correctly, and she can hardly have been mistaken
as to his profession. Possibly he had not an official connection with
the army.]

§ 2. The next group of cases are more recent ; but some of them
lack corroboration ; and some are weakened, as evidence for telepathy,
by the fact that the percipient was in more or less anxiety as to the
condition of the absent person, or by an absence of definiteness in the
coincidence.

(499) From the Rev. W. B. Lindesay, LL.D., The Abbey, Tipperary.

" August 30th, 1884.

" In 1877 I was living in Dublin, and very anxious about my father,
who was dangerously ill with congested lungs, in Wales.

" Awaking suddenly one night I distinctly saw him sitting on a chair
near me, with his face covered by his hands. When I jumped out of
bed he vanished. So startled was I that, next day, I crossed to Wales,
and found that he had been delirious for two days.

" When I entered his room he at once said he had gone the day before
to tell me where he had left a top-coat that I knew he had lost some
time previous to his illness. I went to the house he named in Dublin,
and found the coat there. " W. B. LINDESAY."

. In answer to inquiries, Mr. Lindesay says : —

" So far as I can remember, my father was still delirious at the time
he said he had gone to see me.

" I told no one of the experience at the time, for I was living by
myself. I have never, that I can recollect, had any other experience of
the kind, and am not subject to any ' hallucination of the senses.'

" I am bound in fairness to tell you that I am an entire disbeliever rh
the supernaturalness of such experiences. This infidelity may be due to
my never having heard of any such experiences which could not be
explained on the coincidence principle."

[Mr. Lindesay is of course right in his disbelief of the "super-
naturalness" of such phenomena ; but it has not struck him that the

462 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

alternative to supposing them supernatural is not necessarily to suppose
them accidental. His concluding comment reproduces the remarks of Lord
Brougham, as to which see Vol. I., pp. 396-7. I need hardly point out again
that every isolated case of coincidence might be accidental, and that the
argument for telepathy is essentially cumulative. This case may perhaps
have been reciprocal ; but we clearly have no proof that the father's expe-
rience was anything more than a purely subjective impression or dream.]

(500) From a lady occupying a responsible position, which obliges her,
out of regard to others, to withhold her name from publication. Her
vivd voce account, given to me in the room where the experience occurred,
made it almost certain that she was in a state of normal wakefulness at
the time ; still, as she had been in bed for some little time, I have placed
the case in this chapter rather than the next. '< ]y/[ay 2nd 1886.

"On the night of the 18th December, 1872, I had retired to bed about
1 1 o'clock. The bed, I may mention, is so placed that any person entering
the room, must pass quite round it before reaching the side on which I lay.
I had perhaps been in bed 20 minutes, and had been thinking over the
events of the evening, a pupils' concert, when suddenly I saw my husband
by the door ; he moved swiftly round the bed till he came close to me,
when he as suddenly disappeared. So astonished was I, that involuntarily
I called him by name. The gas was alight, as usual, in the room ; and as
I knew that I had not been asleep, and had not heard a sound to alarm
me, I had not a doubt, any more than I have at this moment, that the
vision was that of my absent husband. On the 30th December of the
same year, I received a letter by the Australian mail, from a gentleman,
telling me that my husband had met with a serious accident, and on the
4th of March in the following year, I had a letter from the same friend,
informing me of his death, and stating that it took place on the 18th
December, 1872.

" I had spoken of the incident of the night of the 18th to my children
as a dream, but to two ladies I related the fact as it occurred ; it was then
a week afterwards,1 and when they knew that my husband was dead, each
lady, though neither knew the other, reminded me of the incident, and
told me the relation of it had strangely impressed her."

We have confirmed the date of death in the obituary of the Daily
Telegraph.

In conversation, the narrator informed me that she has never had any
other visual hallucination. She described her experience to her children,
at breakfast next morning, as a dream, in order not to alarm them. She
herself felt no alarm or apprehension whatever. Of the two friends whom
she mentions, one has recently died, and she has lost sight of the other.
Her husband had been an invalid for years, and as far as she knew was as
well as usual.

The narrator's daughter writes, on May 13, 1886 : —

" I have searched everywhere I can think of, but without success, in
finding the programme of the Pupils' Concert ; but my sister and self both
agreed as to being sure the day was Dec. 18, 1872, and we believe it fell on
a Wednesday. [Dec. 18 was a Wednesday.] We also remember perfectly

1 This refers to the mention of the matter to the second friend ; to the other the expe-
rience was described (the narrator informs me) on the day following its occurrence.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 463

our mother relating the next day what she called a strange dream she had
had the night previously ; and have frequently since heard her speak of
the same as a vision."

[The Australian letter, which the narrator has preserved, states that
the hour of the death was about 4.30 p.m., which would correspond with
about 6.30 a.m. in England. If, therefore, the vision occurred on the
night of that day, it followed the death by more than 12 hours. But the
narrator (without my having suggested this point) wrote, on May 14, 1886,
to say that a daughter, who slept with her on the night of the vision, re-
minds her that on concert nights they always sat up late, and that pro-
bably they did not go upstairs till nearly 2. Now this fact would very
probably be in the percipient's memory at the time that the news of the
death arrived, and its connection with the vision was surmised ; and as
she is very positive that the dates coincided, it seems at any rate possible
that the concert was, after all, on the 17th, and that her vision took place
at 2.30a.m. on the 18th. As against this hypothesis, however, I should
mention a recollection which she has that, when talking over the matter
with one of the friends mentioned, she remarked on an apparent dis-
crepancy of hours, and the friend (she believes) pointed out that, longi-
tude being allowed for, the hours agreed ; which is just what would seem
to be the case if the vision was at 2.30 a.m. on the 19th, and the 10 hours'
difference of time was reckoned (as so often happens) the wrong way. It
is worth noting that even supposing our arbitrary 1 2 hours' limit to have
been exceeded, the vision still fell at what was probably the first season of
silence and recueillement that had presented itself since the hour when the
death occurred. See Vol. I., pp. 201, 329.]

(501) From the Rev. H. N. B. and his sister-in-law, Miss Fagg. The
percipient, Mrs. B., is out of health, and must not be troubled for an
account. The following is a letter from Mr. B. to his daughter : —

"December 5th, 1883.

" I was at Langtoft, but E. (i.e., Mrs. B.) and Miss Fagg had returned
with Ernie to Deal, as he was ordered to go to the sea. There were two rooms
at Deal intercommunicating, the inner being only approached through the
first room. In the inner room the nurse (Alice) and the baby were sleep-
ing ; in the outer one, E.; Miss Fagg was sleeping downstairs. The bed
was curtained. In the night E. was awoke by, as she thought, the nurse
standing by her bed. Half asleep, without moving, she said, ' What is it,
Alice 1 ' but there was no answer. She said again, ' What is it 1 is there
anything the matter with baby ? ' Still there was no answer. She then
roused herself, and saying sharply, ' Why do you not speak, Alice ? ' she
put back the curtain, and saw your aunt standing there. She was
so terrified that she jumped out of bed and ran straight down, as she
was, to Nelly [Miss Fagg]. The next day I, at Langtoft, had a letter
saying your aunt had died very unexpectedly, at Broxbourne. We did
not know she was seriously ill, as she had gone to Broxbourne on a visit?
I could not identify the time ; but, as far as I could make out, the (sup-
posed) appearance took place some hours after your aunt's death."

Miss Fagg writes, from Ripple Rectory, Deal, on Aug. 28, 1884 : —

" One night, about 2 o'clock, I believe, my sister, Mrs. B., came into
my room saying she had seen Miss Grace B., and she was sure something

464 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

had happened. She told me she saw someone in her room, and thought it
was the nurse come about the baby. The figure was turned towards the
window where the food was kept ; and had on a grey waterproof like the
nurse. My sister spoke to the figure, and said, ' Why are you getting the
food so soon 1 ' My sister was not then frightened, as she quite thought
it was the nurse. But the figure then turned round, and it was the face
of Miss Grace B., looking full at my sister, but a dead face, with a some-
thing white round the head, but curls just like Miss Grace B. used to wear.
My sister after that came down to me, and I went into her room, but
nothing more was seen. After that we heard that Miss Grace B. was
dead. "ELLEN E. FAGG."

In answer to inquiries, Miss Fagg adds : —

"The date of Miss Grace B.'s death was August 3rd, 1868; the time,
I think, between 5 to 6 o'clock in the afternoon, \fancy she must have,
as it seemed, appeared to my sister the same night after she was dead.
We knew Miss Grace B. was ailing ; she was, in fact, on a visit at the
time of her death ; but there was no thought of her dying. My sister had
had no communication with her previously. I am nearly sure that Miss B.
must have appeared to my sister the same night that she died.

" My sister always has seemed to know things different to other people.
She seems to know when any one has died in any room. She seems
either to feel, hear, or see the people. On one occasion we lived in an old
house in Eastry, near here, and she saw, as it seemed, an old woman
looking at her. The next morning when- she described it to our cook
who had been taking care of the house before we went into it, she said,
' Yes, that old woman once lived here.' " [This, of course, may have been
a purely subjective hallucination.]

P.S. by the Rev. H. N. B. — " There is no doubt that the appearance
(so-called) took place on the night of the day on the afternoon of which
Miss G. B. died."

We have confirmed the date of the death by the Register of Deaths.

[This is apparently a case of delayed recognition, similar to those given
in Chap. XII., § 3.]

The next account belongs to the interesting class which suggests
a peculiar susceptibility in certain persons to spontaneous telepathic
impressions. (See p. 77, and cases 513, 514, 515, below.) One of the
three experiences recorded was a dream, but I give it here in order
not to break up the series.

(502) From Mrs. W., who prefers that her name should not be published.

"Oxford, 1884.

(A) "In 1874 I was in England, ill in bed ; and I distinctly saw my
dear mother, who was at that time at Nice, come up to the foot of my bed,
and look earnestly and sorrowfully at me ; it was broad daylight, and I
noticed the shawl she wore, one I had not seen her wear for many years.1
I started up, and she was gone.2 I then knew that her last illness must
have come, though I was kept in ignorance of it, as I was so dangerously

1 See Vol. i., p. 540.

2 See p. 91, second note.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 465

ill myself. I wrote to her, and her answer told me what I dreaded was
true. I was allowed to recover sufficiently to go out to Nice, and be with
her to the end. Also, I ought to say, that the morning her dear image
appeared to me, a doctor arrived from London whom she had sent to me by
telegraphing to him from Nice, and this doctor was the means of saving my
life, as I was at that time so ill that he said I could not have lived more
than four hours longer.

(B) "When I was in the South of France, in 1878, I had a dream
that a sister, who is especially dear to me, was in a carriage accident, and
in my dream I saw her killed, but on reaching her I found her unhurt and
as she smiled at me I dreamed I was dying of the agony of mind I had
gone through. I never can forget the dream, the suffering was so intense.
I awoke with pain in my heart and faintness, and woke my husband and
told him. (I think my cries in my sleep awoke him.) I wrote to my
sister, and when her answer arrived she gave me in it the account of the
danger she had passed through.

(C) " One night I was awakened out of my sound sleep by a voice
close to my ear, saying, ' Rise, you have no time to lose,' and words to
the effect that the child 1 of this very dear sister was dying, and that she
needed my prayers. I cannot remember the exact words, but I felt it was
conveyed to me that / had to help her with all the earnestness I could,
and there was an awe about it I cannot describe. Afterwards I found
that at this very time on that night her most beloved child had passed
through the crisis in diphtheria.

"Nothing of importance ever happened to any one very dear to me
without my feeling it, though I may be far from them. " C. M. W."

Replying to our inquiries, Mrs. W.'s daughter, Miss E. M. W., writes
(on Jan. 23, 1885), in reference to (A), that her mother "does not know
anything about the shawl forming part of my grandmother's dress at the
time she saw the apparition." She has had no other hallucinations ; and
she had no reason to suspect her mother's illness. Miss W.'s own
testimony is as follows : —

"I clearly remember, in 1874, my mother in her dangerous illness
seeing my dear grandmother come up to the foot of the bed. My mother
has often told me since that her mother was wearing a certain crimson
shawl she was very fond of, that her spectacles had dropped, and she
looked over them at my mother, with sad inquiring eyes. My mother
gazed at her for a minute, and then cried out when the apparition
vanished ; and when the nurse came in, having heard her cry, my mother
insisted on being told the truth about her mother ; for she said she knew
that she had come to tell her she was dying, which was indeed the fact,
though she lived long enough to enable my mother to see her before she
died."

In reference to (B) and (C), Mrs. W.'s sister writes : —

" On one occasion I received an anxious letter from my sister inquir-
ing if anything had happened to me, as she had dreamed of a serious
carriage-accident in which I was in danger. This letter was received by
me before I had informed her of the danger in which I had been placed,

1 This slightly differs from the version given at the top of the next page, where
there is no mention of the special person who was in need.

VOL. II. 2 H

466 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

and the serious consequences which mercifully were averted by the presence
of mind of my coachman.

" On another occasion my sister was awakened by a voice which said
distinctly, ' Rise at once. You have no time to lose. One you love is in
sore need.' She did rise from her bed to pray for me, and afterwards
knew that my child had passed through the crisis of diphtheria at that
very time, and that her life was in imminent danger. " BESSIE S."

Miss E. M. W. writes : —

" I perfectly remember both these dreams of my mother's, as she
related them to me before receiving the answers to her letters to my aunt."

In answer to inquiries, she adds : —

" January 23rd, 1885.

"Mother is not in the habit of dreaming of accidents, and as far as she
can remember it was the only time she has ever dreamt of an accident.
The carriage did not upset. The facts are as follows : — My aunt has a
very light cab built by my uncle especially for her, and on one occasion my
aunt was driving along a narrow road, when her coachman whipped up
the horses, and began driving at a furious pace. My aunt, alarmed, looked
through the little window at the back of the carriage, and saw a great
dray with a runaway horse tearing after the carriage. Just as it must
have run into it and smashed it, the coachman turned the cab into an
opening in the road. It was the only place in the road where the cab
could have stopped, and it was the coachman's only hope to reach it, and
the dray rushed by, leaving the cab unharmed. It did a great deal of
damage, and the driver was killed. You see mother did not dream exactly
the facts of the case, but only that my aunt was nearly killed by a
carriage accident.

" As to the ' other intimations of danger,' &c., they are this, that
whenever anything happens to those dear to her she always knows there is
something happening. For instance, I was laid up with a very bad cough
and cold when away from her last year, and she wrote me an anxious
letter, saying, she knew I was ill, for she had an idea I had inflammation
of the lungs. Last month I was suffering dreadfully from toothache, and
determined I would go and have two teeth out without saying anything to
mother, for fear of worrying her ; she thought I was going for a walk, but
all the time I was gone she was so unhappy about me, and S. told me
when I had come back that mother had cried and been wretched all the
time. You see the things are not big enough to attract much attention,
but we in the house know them to be true."

[It is not quite clear how far the vision (A) coincided with a sudden
and marked change in the state of the agent. Also it is possible that the
doctor's visit, or the expectation of it, may have called up her mother's
image to Mrs. W.'s mind, and that her illness may have rendered her
specially liable to hallucination. It would remain noteworthy (unless
there was special reason to fear the attack of fatal illness) that the
apparition produced a true conviction in Mrs. W.'s mind as to what was
occurring to her mother.

As to (B), we have no evidence that the dream took place on the
night of the day on which the accident occurred ; but to anyone
who accepts the general fact of telepathic communication, it will at

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 467

least seem reasonable to surmise that the coincidence was not a merely
accidental one. The impression of the child's illness (C) is, however,
more important, both because it was more than a dream, and because
the time-coincidence seems in this case to have been ascertained to be
exact.

With regard to the less definite impressions it would be difficult to
assign them an evidential value without constant and careful notes,
because of the double indefiniteness — the difficulty (1) of deciding what
events are of sufficient importance to afford a primd facie presumption
that the coincident experiences are telepathically connected with them,
and (2) of distinguishing clearly a peculiar feeling that something is
happening from vague anxiety about absent friends.1 If persons who
show signs of this susceptibility would continuously, for some little time
make a note in writing, with as much detail as possible, whenever a
feeling of this kind occurred, and afterwards record the confirmation or
absence of confirmation, interesting light might be thrown on the subject.]

(503) Obtained through the kindness of Miss C. D. Garnett, of Furze
Hill Lodge, Brighton, from a cousin, Mrs. D., who prefers that her own
name should not be printed. Miss Garnett says : —

" I may safely say she never before or since had such a vision. She is
thoroughly practical and unimaginative, not in the least excitable, and I
remember well how puzzled she was for a long time after. When she came
to me some time after, she was full of it, and described it to me most
graphically. She is almost like a sister to us, and I think discussed this
affair more with us than with her own people. Her sister thought she
was dreaming, but her father was rather astonished when she told him of
the vision the next morning."

"September 15th, 1885.

" Some few years ago the occurrence took place which I am about to
relate. I was lying awake one night, my thoughts fixed on no particular
subject, when before me seemed to rise the vision of the interior of a
cathedral ; the details which marked it from an ordinary church being
clearly defined. In the open space before the chancel lay a coffin enveloped
in its heavy black pall. After a few moments (as it seemed to me) it faded
gradually away.2 I sat up and roused myself, as the whole scene was so
real and strange, and I was convinced I had not been asleep. I had not
lain down long before the same scene again repeated itself upon my brain,
in every detail exactly as I had seen it before.3 The repetition of the vision
(for such I firmly believed it was) filled me with presentiments of trouble,
and rousing my sister, who was sleeping in the same room, I told her what
I had seen ; but as was natural, she concluded I had been dreaming. Next
morning at breakfast I related what had occurred, and it was remarked that
we knew no one in England whose funeral service would be likely to take
place in a cathedral. Shortly after, we received news by telegram of the
sudden death of my brother in the West Indies, and the day coincided
with that on which I had seen the vision as related. When the letters

1 See Vol. i., pp. 270, 505 ; and above, pp. 26-7.

2 See p. 97, first note.

3 See p. 237, note.

VOL. II. 2 H 2

468 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

containing all details arrived, we learnt that he was buried the same day
that he died, in the evening, the funeral service taking place in the Colonial
Cathedral. Allowing for the difference in time, it appears to have been as
near as possible the same time as I in England saw the whole scene
represented, the remembrance of which has remained indelibly printed on
my memory. " J. D."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. D. says : —

"The date of my brother's death was February 21st, and as far as I can
remember I had the dream that evening, but it is so long since that as
regards dates I do not like to be too certain. As regards the length of
time between the death and funeral, it was, I believe, only a few hours,
certainly less than 12. The news of his death reached us by telegram on
February 28th, about a week later. I have never had anything in the
way of a vision either before or since. I enclose the few lines from my
sister on the subject, after having told her that I had written you an
account." The sister's words are : —

"I corroborate the statement of my sister's dream of February, 1879,
which she narrated to me the morning after it occurred. « g Q. »

We find from the Times obituary that the death took place at George
Town, Demerara, on February 21st, 1879.

[Without more details as to the supposed resemblance between the place
seen in the vision and the real place of- the funeral, no stress ought, I
think, to be laid on this point ; which is one, it will be seen, that telepathy
could not satisfactorily account for.]

(504) Received on Oct. 28, 1884, from a gentleman occupying a high
public position, who does not wish to give his name or to procure other
attestations. He writes, it will be seen, in the third person. French is
not his native language.

The account begins with an experience which M. had during

his father's last illness, while taking a brief sleep, after long nursing.

" Pendant le plus fort de son sommeil, M. — — se sentit comme tres
fortement secoue' et appele" par son nom. II se reVeilla en sursaut, tout
effraye', sauta de son lit, se dirigeant vers la porte, ayant devant lui comme
une ombre, qui disparu des qu'il fut dans 1'entree. II traversa le grand
salon, et tout Fappartement attenant. Arrive' a la chambre de son pere, il
trouva la garde-malade debout sur le seuil de la porte, lui barrant le
passage. Son pere venait d'expirer au moment meme.

" L'impression de ce re* veil est reste' tellement vive dans 1'esprit de
M. — — • qu'il n'en a jamais parl^ sans ajouter, ' Ce n'e*tait certainement
pas la re'alite', mais pour sur c'e'tait plus qu'un reve.' "

This case alone could not have found a place in our evidence, as
M. — — was aware of his father's critical condition, and was in a highly
anxious and overstrained state. But he continues : —

" Quatre ans plus tard, en I'anne'e 1849, M. — — habitait Constanti-
nople ; il e*tait proscrit et 1'entree de son pays lui etait interdite. Sa mere,
qui e*tait a Bucarest, s'e"tait de'cide'e d'aller s'dtablir aupres de lui ; elle
n'attendait plus que 1'ouverture de la navigation du Danube, qui a lieu
gdneYalement vers le mois de Mars. Elle avait deja annoncd a son fils le

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 469

norm du bateau de la Compagnie du Loyd Autrichien ser lequel elle devait
s'embarquer & Galatz, et le 8 Avril elle devait arriver a Constantinople.
Ces bateaux arrivaient toujours dans la Corne-d'or les mardis, vers les six
heures du matin.

" Le 7 Avril M. passa la soire'e avec deux de ses amis et parents,

et Ton de'cida que le lendemain les deux amis viendraient le chercher
pour aller tous les trois recevoir la dame k bord. Les deux amis arriverent
le matin a 1'heure convenue chez M. — — . Grand fut leur e'tonnement
lorsque celui-ci leur dit qu'il e'tait inutile d'aller au bateau, parceque sa
mere venait de mourir. Ses amis crurent d'abord qu'il avait re§u des
nouvelles, mais ayant re'fle'chi qu'il n'y avait pas pu avoir eu des lettres
depuis une semaine, car il n'y avait eu depuis aucun arrivage — & cette
e'poque le tdl^graphe e'tait chose completement inconnue dans ces parages —
ils furent inquiets sur 1'etat de 1'esprit de leur ami, qui persistait a leur
dire avec la plus grande assurance que sa mere e'tait morte dans la nuit
meme. M. — — venait d'avoir, apres s'etre endormi, le meme reVeil,
pre'cisement avec les memes circonstances, que dans la nuit du 26 au 27
Novembre, 1844, lors de la mort de son pere.

" Le bateau suivant, arrive' le 15 Avril, apportait des lettres annon9ant
que la mere de M. — — avait succombe' dans la nuit du 7 au 8 Avril k la
suite d'un acces de fievre bilieuse, apres une courte maladie de deux jours."

The narrator stated in conversation that he had never had any sub-
jective experience of the sort.

[The particular form of the second experience may perhaps have been
due to the effect of the former one on M. — — 's mind.]

(505) From Miss Henrietta Wilkinson, Enniscorthy, Ireland.

"January, 1884.

" I live in Ireland, my nephew in London. At the end of October or
beginning of November, 1881, when he was 8 years old, he went one day
with his mother and sister to Kensington Gardens. While playing there
he had a severe fall on his back ; his mother had to call a cab and take
him home, then send for the doctor. He was very ill for three or four
days, lying in a dark room and kept perfectly quiet. The accident
happened on a Saturday, I think. On the Sunday his mother wrote to
tell me of it, which letter I received on Tuesday. On the Monday night
I was in bed, dropping off to sleep, when I opened my eyes with a start,
and saw, quite distinctly, a London street, leading from Kensington
Gardens to my nephew's home. All the people, cabs, and horses were
running very fast in one direction, towards my sister's house. Amongst
them were my sister and her two children, also running. They stopped
a cab, got in, and arrived at their own house. I saw no more but
exclaimed ' Maurice is hurt ! ' why, I do not know, as my nephew
looked all right in the street. It all seemed to come from outside
myself. I thought it very strange, and told it to my family next morning,
before my sister's letter arrived. I am not perfectly sure of the day of
the week, but know it was the day after the accident my sister wrote, and
that it was the night of the day after she wrote that I saw what I tell you.

" I think it was my nephew's thoughts of me that gave me the vision,
I being the person he would think of, next to his father and mother.

" HENRIETTA WILKINSON."

470 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Asked whether she had ever, on any other occasion, had a dream of
death or accident which had impressed her, she says : — " No, I remember
none. It was quite unique. But why call it a dream when I was wide
awake ? Had it been a dream I don't think it would have made the same
impression on me."

Miss Wilkinson's sister writes on Jan. 8, 1884, from Castle Hill,
Enniscorthy : —

" I distinctly remember my sister relating to us (myself and another
sister) her vision or dream before she got any letter. It made a great
impression on her, and she told us with surprise and a little alarm. She
told us on Tuesday morning, and the letter telling of the accident arrived
soon after. " MARTHA WILKINSON."

The interval between the accident and Miss Wilkinson's ex-
perience is too long for the case to be treated as one of deferred de-
velopment (see Vol. I., p. 511); but the vision, which seems clearly to
have been of a very unusual kind, may conceivably have been due to
a half delirious recrudescence of the agitated scene in the mind of the
little invalid. The confused and inaccurate character of the vision
might be sufficiently accounted for in this way ; but might also be
construed as the transforming and dream-like investiture which tele-
pathic percipients have so often seemed to supply.

The next case is a singular one, as, supposing it to have been tele-
pathic, there was no personal bond between the agent and percipient.
In this respect it recalls cases 459 and 490 ; but in the present case
there was local proximity between the parties.

(506) From a lady whose family object to the publication of her name.

"May 24th, 1884.

" Somewhere about three years ago, to the best of my remembrance, I
was suddenly awoke in the night by hearing what seemed to me a voice
saying, ' You had better get up, someone is dying.' I went to my father's
door, but finding all right, ret .rned to bed, but could not sleep again all
the rest of the night. The next day one of my servants told me the
gentleman next door had died in the night. I was not aware he was likely
to die, indeed I knew nothing of him, and he never entered my thoughts.
He had been delicate or an invalid ever since we had lived here. I did
not mention this dream at the time, not supposing it would interest my
father. I have always been a great dreamer."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death took place on
March 19th, 1881, at the house next Miss L.'s.

In answer to inquiries, Miss L. writes on June 28, 1884 : —
" I have heard, or seem to have heard, voices at other times, both
by day and night, and I think they have invariably had some meaning,
except in cases where I have accounted for them in consequence of my
suffering from overstrained nerves or illness. I do not remember ever
being awoke by a voice in this way at any other time, though I have some-

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 471

times awoke suddenly thinking someone called me by name. This is the
only case I have experienced of being awakened by a remark"

[In an interview with Miss L., Mr. Podmore learnt that she had fixed
the time of her impression by hearing the clock strike 3 soon afterwards.
The servant, from whom Miss L. heard of the death next morning, thinks
she was told by a servant next door that it took place at 4 a.m., and is
certain it was " in the morning." After hearing of the death, Miss L.
wrote and told her sister of her experience ; the sister confirmed this. The
wall between the two houses is too thick to permit the sound of conversa-
tion to pass.]

(507) From Mr. Francis A. Suttaby, 2, Amen Corner, E.G., and 48,
Redcliffe Square, S.W. « March 3rd, 1884.

"En route home, in July last, when about in mid- Atlantic, on a certain
evening I retired in due course to rest, and in my sleep was suddenly
disturbed by a voice (impetuous) calling aloud, ' Frank ! Frank ! ' (I was
alone, as I had a berth entirely to myself.) So suddenly did I spring up
out of my heavy sleep, that I nearly knocked my head against the berth
that was over mine. I replied, ' Yes, yes, what ? ' No answer coming,
I spoke again, hastily, ' I am here — what's the matter ? — who called 1 '
No answer being vouchsafed, and supposing there was some mistake on
my part, as poor little disturbed Samuel might have done, I addressed
myself aloud, 'Francis Arthur, go to sleep — some mistake.' Of course,
the next morning, at the breakfast table — the captain had invited me
to his table — I made much amusement for him and the ladies and a
certain Major Jones, of Kingston, Ontario. I must admit Major Jones
seemed more concerned than I allowed myself to be. In fact, I tried to
put away the thought, and made light of it. Within an hour of my
reaching my dear old uncle's house at Putney (my wife and family being
then in France), my aunt informed me of the sudden death of my cousin
Nora [Mrs. R. J, which was most touching to me ; and when I ascertained
the day the poor soul died, ' Why,' I said, ' that's the very morning I was
disturbed in my sleep,' telling her what I have already described to you.
Subsequently, I gathered the hour my cousin died, and that the strange
cry of ' Frank, Frank,' as for help, which startled me out of my sleep, was
at the very hour when Nora was really, but apparently unconsciously,
passing from this lower world ; for the difference in time between here and
where I was would bring the hour of her flight and evident call to one and
the same.

" Perhaps the most extraordinary feature connected with the voice is,
that' not till I saw her brother Ernest, in Torquay, did anyone think to ask
me, as he did, ' But whose voice do you suppose it was 1 ' Immediately it
dawned on me, ' Why, your sister's — Nora's, without a doubt.' Then he
asked, Why I thought it was her voice ? ' Because I can now distinguish
it as her voice. It was hastily spoken, impetuous, as you know she could
be.' "FRAS. A. SUTTABY."

Mr. Suttaby fixed the date of the voice by its occurring in the night*
(or very early morning), after the only storm which they had on the
voyage, this storm being noted in his diary. He kindly sent us an extract
from the diary, which showed that the weather from July 4, when the
" Bothnia " left New York, to July 8 was fine. The extracts for the next
3 days are as follow : —

472 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" 9th. — Fine, but rough. Ended with a storm, and retired early,
whilst I could stand.

" 10th. — Fine and bright all day, but very stormy. Remained in bed
all day.

" llth. — In my seat at breakfast. Pleasant day, and played 'shuffles.'"

Mr. Suttaby continues : —

" The memorial-card of my cousin states that she died suddenly July
10th. I cannot now be certain as to when I heard my name called —
whether on morning of 10th or llth. All I know is that when informed
of the death of my cousin, each day then being fresh in my memory, I
fixed it as an unquestionable fact, not supposing I should ever be questioned
again as to details, and having no reasons, no motives whatsoever, for
fixing the cry of ' Frank, Frank ' to the day of my cousin's death.

" What I stated did occur, and no one's voice but that of Nora
resembled the twice-repeated impetuous cry."

We find from the obituary of the Scotsman that Mrs. R. died suddenly
on July 10, 1883. She had no relatives with her when she died. In
conversation with the present writer, Mr. Suttaby mentioned that he was
the person who, from circumstances, had had most to do with her and her
affairs of late years, and he thus regards it as natural that her thoughts
should have turned specially to him. Her death was very sudden.

Mr. Suttaby tells us that he has on one other occasion experienced a
hallucination, which again consisted in hearing his name called ; but as
this took place at a large railway station, it was possibly a real call. With
regard to the present case he says : —

" I do not admit what I heard was hallucination. I was fast asleep
in my bed, and I was suddenly awaked ; I sat up quickly, and said, ' Yes,
yes! I am here. What? — Who called1?' — or words to that effect. I
never lost the firm conviction that I was really called — that a real voice,
as if needing my protection and assistance, called to me."

We have ascertained from Capt. McKay that he does not (in April,
1886) recall Mr. Suttaby's mention of the incident. Major Jones writes,
on April 6, 1886, from the Army and Navy Club, S.W. : —

" I cannot tell you more than the fact that one day Mr. Suttaby stated
he had awoke in the night hearing a child call, and that he thought it
must be a niece (I think) who had died." This last detail cannot weigh
against Mr. Suttaby's distinct recollection that the voice at the time was
not distinctly associated with his cousin.

[Whether the experience was on the 10th or llth, it is possible,
though not certain, that it fell within 12 hours of the death.]

(508) From Mrs. Hancock, Penarth Lodge, Stoke Bishop, Bristol, a
member of the Society of Friends.

"April 14th, 1884.

" In my Northern-Irish home, I received a letter on the 7th November,
1865, from my brother in Warwickshire, saying that my mother was ill,
and he wished I would go and see her. I started the same evening by
Belfast and Fleetwood. I had been several hours in my berth, on the
Irish Channel, and was half asleep, when I was startled by feeling a hand
grasp my shoulder and a voice say, in a loud whisper, ' Come quickly.' I

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 473

rose up and sat looking round the cabin, but could see no one. I called
to the stewardess, but she was fast asleep, and so were all the other ladies.
I again lay down, but not to sleep, and in a very short time, not 20
minutes afterwards, the same pressure was put on my shoulder and the
same words were distinctly uttered close to my ear, ' Come quickly.' l I
again called loudly to the stewardess and told her to light the lamp, for I
was sure some one must have been standing by me. She declared that no
one had been in the cabin, and all around was so still and quiet. I
reached the station at half-past 12 at noon, when my brother met me. He
said, ' All is over, my mother passed away at 4 this morning.'

" I ought to have stated that when I called to the stewardess and
made her light the lamp, immediately after I heard the voice and felt the
hand on my shoulder the second time, I then asked her to tell me
what o'clock it was, and she said, ' Four o'clock.' I looked at my own
watch and it was the same. I being an only daughter and my mother
having been a widow the last five years of her life, she was much wrapped
up in me and in my children, and the tie between us was of no ordinary
kind. I have always looked upon this as a direct voice from herself, just
as she was dying and passing into the spiritual world.

"Lucy HANCOCK."

We find from the Coventry Herald that the death took place on Nov.
9, 1865. Mrs. Hancock can hardly be mistaken as to having heard the
news from her brother on her arrival, i.e., on the day following that on
which she started. We may conclude therefore that the 7th in the first
line of her account is a mistake for 8th.

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Hancock adds : —

" In reply to your question, whether I have at any other time, besides
the one described, ' had an experience of the kind, i.e., fancied I heard or
felt a human presence when no one was present,' I have to say that I
never did.

" My brother has just been here, and says he recollects saying to me
' all was over at 4 o'clock this morning,' on the day he met me at the
station, November 9th, 1865 ; but he does not recollect the particulars of
what happened to me on board the steamer. He has at any rate a very
bad memory, whereas I have the reputation of having an unusually good
one ; and to my mind that pressure on my arm, twice, and the words
' Come quickly ' are as vivid now as if all had happened last week, instead
of 19 years ago."

[The weak point in this case is of course the state of anxiety which
preceded the experience ; the strong point, if correctly remembered, is the
exactitude of the coincidence. Mrs. Hancock had no previous belief in
anything like telepathy, and takes no special interest in the subject.]

(509) From Mrs. Sprague, Sunnyside, 275, Coldharbour Lane, Brixton,
S.W., who says that " the particulars are plain unvarnished truth."

"Aug. 25th, 1886.

[The narrator's mother, Mrs. Green, to whom she was deeply attached,
had promised that, if she died when they were apart, she would let her
daughter " know that she was quitting this world." 2 Soon after Mrs.

1 As to repetition after a short interval, see p. 105, first note.
8 See p. 66, note.

474 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Sprague's marriage, her mother went to keep house for a son, at Major's
Creek, Braidwood, N.S. Wales, and the two had not met for 12 years. In
the summer of 1868, Mrs. Sprague, who had been in New Zealand, was on
her way to pay her mother a visit.] " She was expecting me ; and the
last letter was cheerful and happy, intensely expectant of my visit ; also
she was, she said, quite well.

"On Sunday night, the 14th of June, 1868, I retired to bed about
11.30, and slept soundly until 3 o'clock, when I suddenly woke hearing my
mother's voice. She stood at the foot of my bed. She said, ' Oh, come / I
want you / ' The moon was at the full ; and the room as light as day. I
threw myself out of bed instantly. She was gone. I then realised how
far away she was : and a strange supernatural feeling, a feeling impossible
to describe, took possession of me : like lightning the compact made in
England many years before returned to my mind, and I knew with
certainty that she was dying. I looked at my watch ; it was 3 o'clock. I
lay awake till the morning dawned, and at 12 o'clock that day I had a
telegram from my brother, asking me to come on quickly as she had had a
fit [late on the Saturday night] and could not live. This was Monday. I
could not leave Melbourne till the following Thursday, there being only
steamers twice a week, so on the Wednesday [corrected in conversation
to Thursday] I received another telegram saying she was dead. Her
body was kept for 10 days that I might attend the funeral, which I did,
travelling post all the time.

" On questioning the nurse who attended her, she said, ' Your mother
ceased to breathe on Wednesday, June 17th, but the last sign of life she
gave was on the Sunday night, or morning, when at about 3 o'clock,
appearing still insensible, she rose up and attempted to stand, but fell
heavily forward. With assistance I replaced her in the bed, and she
remained motionless till she ceased to breathe.' This was the exact
moment that her spirit appeared and called me."1

In conversation, Mrs. Sprague stated that not only her child, but also her
landlady, Mrs. Bellman, was sleeping with her on the night of the vision.
We are endeavouring to trace Mrs. Bellman. The brother and the nurse
are dead. Miss Alice Sprague stated independently that she distinctly
remembers being woke by her mother's exclamation ; and she also remem-
bers Mrs. Bellman's remonstrating with Mrs. Sprague for disturbing her ;
but Miss Sprague has no recollection of being told at the time what her
mother had seen.

Mrs. Sprague has had only one other hallucination in her life, which
followed the above by nearly 7 years : it was again of the " borderland "
type, and represented her deceased mother.

[The fact that the percipient's mind had no doubt been considerably
occupied with the thought of her approaching meeting with her mother,
somewhat weakens the case ; but I know of no other instance where
the idea of a happy meeting has originated so abnormal an experience.]

§ 3. The next little group are first-hand cases which have already
been published.

(510) From the Memoir of the Hon. and Rev. Power-le-Poer Trench,
last Archbishop of Tuam (1845), by the Rev. J. D'Arcy Sirr, D.D.,

1 See p. 48, note.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 475

pp. 762-3. The account is part of a letter written by the Rev. Samuel
Medlicott, from Pau. Our attention was called to it by the Rev. Canon
Eyre, of Bray, a very intimate friend of Mr. Medlicott, who adds that Mr
Medlicott had been enabled to go to Pau for his health through the kind-
ness of the Archbishop of Tuam.

"An interesting circumstance connected with the death of the dear
servant of God, our late venerated and truly beloved Archbishop, I will
simply relate as follows. I was at my brother's house in Wiltshire,
whither I made my first move in search of health early in March last year.
There at a very early hour on Monday, (I think 4 o'clock,) the dear Arch-
bishop (I shall never forget his sweet face), though pale as death, stood at
the foot of my bed and said, ' I am tired of, and I will leave (or I have left)
Tuam, and will never return there.' This greatly distressed me, and of
course roused me. I thought I had, as it were, seen a vision, and men-
tioned what I did hear to Mrs. Medlicott as soon as she awoke. But how
was I disturbed ! how painfully cut down, when, in due course of time,
the heartrending tidings reached me that on that very day, and at that
very hour, his Grace had departed this life."

We find from the Memoir that the Archbishop died at Tuam, of
typhoid fever, on March 26, 1839, at 3.10 a.m.; the coincidence was
therefore probably close to within an hour.

(511) Translated from Schriften fur und an seine Lieben Deutschen, by
E. M. Arndt (Leipzig, 1845), Vol. III., pp. 524-5. (See case 467.)

Arndt describes how, in the winter of 1811, when staying in a friend's
house, he was sitting up working one night, after a fatiguing day, and was
half asleep in his chair — " when lo ! my dear old Aunt Sophia, my second
mother, stood before me with a kind smile, holding on each arm a little
boy. They were children whom I dearly loved. She held them out to
me with a gesture which seemed to say ' Take the children to your care.' "
The next day at noon, while Arndt was sitting talking with his friends,
" the carriage of my brother William drove up with a letter, saying,
' Brother, come back at once in the carriage ; we must cross the water
to Buchholz to-morrow, and bury our dear old Aunt Sophia, who died last
night.' "

(512) From Works of the Rev. John Wesley. A.M. (Edition of 1856),
Vol. II.. pp. 350-1. The account, on the face of it, is in the words of the
percipient ; but we cannot be absolutely sure of this.

The passage is from Wesley's Journal for Thursday, June 3rd, 1756.

" I received a remarkable letter from a clergyman with whom I had
been a day or two before ; part of it ran thus : ' I had the following account
from the gentlewoman herself, a person of piety and veracity. She is now
the wife of Mr. J. B., silversmith in Cork.'

" ' " About 30 years ago, I was addressed, by way of marriage, by Mr.
Richard Mercier, then a volunteer in the army. The young gentleman
was quartered at that time in Charleville, where my father lived, who*
approved of his addresses, and directed me to look upon him as my future
husband. When the regiment left the town, he promised to return in two
months and marry me. From Charleville he went to Dublin, thence to
his father's, and from thence to England ; where, his father having bought
him a cornetcy of horse, he purchased many ornaments for the wedding,

476 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

and returning to Ireland, let us know that he would be at our house in
Charleville in a few days. On this the family was busied to prepare for
his reception, and the ensuing marriage, when, one night, my sister Mary
and I being asleep in our bed, I was awaked by the sudden opening of the
side curtains, and starting up, saw Mr. Mercier standing by the bedside.
He was wrapped up in a loose sheet, and had a napkin, folded like a
nightcap, on his head. He looked at me very earnestly, and lifting up the
napkin, which much shaded his face, showed me the left side of his head,
all bloody, and covered with his brains ; l the room, meantime, was quite
light.2 My terror was excessive, which was increased by his stooping over
the bed, and embracing me in his arms. My cries alarmed the whole
family, who came crowding into the room. Upon their entrance, he
gently withdrew his arms and ascended, as it were, through the ceiling.3 I
continued for some time in strong fits. When I could speak I told them
what I had seen.

" ' " One of them a day or two after, going to the postman for letters,
found him reading the newspapers, in which was an account that Cornet
Mercier, going into Christ Church belfry, in Dublin, just after the bells
had been ringing, and standing under the bells, one of them, which was
turned bottom upwards, suddenly turned again, struck one side of his
head, and killed him on the spot. On further inquiry, he found he was
struck on the left side of his head." '

[The death of Mr. Mercier does not appear in the Dublin Gazette, which
is the only Dublin paper of that date that we can obtain ; and we know
of no other publication where it would be likely to be mentioned.]

The remarkable narrative of Elizabeth Hobson, of Sunderland,
given by Wesley in his diary, under date May 25, 1768, is too long
to quote in full. It is complicated by matter which does not belong
to the subject of this book, and by much that looks like subjective
hallucination. But it is almost certain that the cases were given in
good faith by a witness of good character. The apparently telepathic
incidents (which I include under a single evidential number), taken
down by Wesley from E. Hobson's lips, are as follows : —

(513) (1) "John Simpson, one of our neighbours, a man that truly
feared God, and one with whom I was particularly acquainted, went to sea,
as usual. He sailed out on a Tuesday. The Friday night following,
between 11 and 12 o'clock, I heard someone walking in my room, and
every step sounded as if it were stepping in water. He then came to the
bedside in his sea-jacket, all wet, and stretched his hand over me. Three
drops of water fell on my head, and felt as cold as ice. I strove to wake
his wife — who lay with me ; but I could not any more than if she were
dead. Afterwards I heard that he was cast away that night.

(2) " A little before Michaelmas, 1763, my brother George, who was a
good young man, went to sea. The day after Michaelmas Day, about

1 These details of the vision are, no doubt, difficult to account for telepathically. It
is possible that they were " read back " after the reality was known (see the remarks on
case 25, Vol. i., p. 206) ; but compare cases 130 and 134.

2 See the two following pages, and Vol. i., pp. 437, 550-1.

3 Compare oases 203, 204, 205.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 477

midnight, I saw him standing by my bedside, surrounded with a glorious
light,1 and looking earnestly at me. He was wet all over. That night
the ship in which he sailed split upon a rock, and all the crew were
drowned.

(3) "On April 9th, 1767, about midnight I was lying awake, and I
saw my brother John standing by my bedside. Just at that time he died
in Jamaica.

(4) "On Friday, July 3rd, ( 1 1767), I was sitting at dinner, when I
thought I heard someone coming along the passage. I looked about, and
saw my aunt, Margaret Scot, of Newcastle, standing at my back. On
Saturday, I had a letter informing me that she died on that day.

(5) " When I was about 16, my uncle fell ill, and grew worse and
worse for three months. One day, having been sent out on an errand, I
was coming home through a lane when I saw him in the field coming
swiftly towards me. I ran to meet him, but he was gone. When I came
home, I found him calling for me. As soon as I came to his bedside, he
clasped his arms round my neck, and bursting into tears, . . . kept
his hold till he sunk down and died ; and even then they could hardly
unclasp his fingers. I would fain have died with him, and wished to be
buried with him, dead or alive."

§ 4. The remaining cases are second-hand. I will first give a
considerable group where the narrators are very near relatives of the
first-hand witnesses, and have no sort of doubt that what is recorded
is the genuine experience of their respective informants.

(514 and 515) From Lieut.-Colonel Fane Sewell, care of Messrs. H. S.
King and Co., 45, Pall Mall, S.W. "Wolfelee, Hawick, N.B.

"August 4th, 1885.

" My mother and Anne Hervey were schoolfellows together at a
Madame Audibert's, in Kensington, and they were bosom friends ; and, as
was not unusual in those days with young girls, they exchanged rings, with
the promise that whichever of the two died first she was to send back to
the other her ring.2

" During the following holidays, for which my mother went to her
home, North Berwick, Anne Hervey remaining at Madame Audibert's in
Kensington, the following incident occurred : —

" My mother suddenly awoke in the night, to find Anne Hervey
standing by her bedside, holding out the ring she had given her. The
apparition lasted a few seconds, and then faded away. My mother was
much frightened, and in the morning told her mother what had happened
to her in the night, adding that she was quite convinced Anne Hervey
was dead, although she had left her perfectly well a fortnight before at
Madame Audibert's.

" The event proved my mother to be right, for in course of post (not
so rapid as in these days) a letter reached her from Madame Audiberf
telling her of Anne Hervey's death from scarlet fever, and enclosing
the ring which she said Anne Hervey had begged, on her deathbed,
might be sent to my mother.

1 Compare the last case and case 205.

2 As to compacts of this sort, see p. 66.

478 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" The above is exactly as I have received it from my mother's lips.
The ring referred to was in my own possession for many years.

" My mother, when at Bangalore, as nearly as I can remember
about the year 1845, was one night awakened by the feeling of something
unusual happening, and saw as she thought a very favourite sister of
my father's, my Aunt Fanny (Mrs. John Hamilton Gray), standing in
her night-dress at the foot of the bed, with her hair falling loosely
round her. There was a peculiar light upon her, though no light of any
kind in the room.1 Another peculiarity about my aunt that my mother
noticed was, that a large lock of my aunt's hair had been cut straight
off close to the temple.2 The apparition appeared to gaze steadily at
my mother for some little time, and then gradually disappeared.

"My mother, to whom such appearances were not altogether unknown,
felt so convinced something serious had happened to my Aunt Fanny,
that, fearing a shock to my father, she took measures to intercept the
letters to my father which she was satisfied must bring him sad news
of some sort relating to my aunt. The event proved her right, for in
due course of post from home came the letter bearing intelligence of my
aunt's unexpected death at sea (Mrs. Gray was journeying from the
Cape of Good Hope to England when she died), on the night above
mentioned, and in the letter was enclosed a large lock of my Aunt Fanny's
hair which had been cut off to send to my father.

" I was a child of 5 or 6 years of age when the above took place, and
I remember the circumstance distinctly, though not the particulars, which
are, however, exactly as I have often heard my mother relate them to
different people. I have often heard my mother relate both these
experiences, as nearly as my memory will serve me, in the exact words I
have used. " FANE SEWELL."

In a later letter Colonel Sewell says that he has failed to get the exact
dates, and adds : —

" In writing out the two accounts I sent you, I purposely excluded
from the second anything of my own personal recollections of the occur-
rence, which took place at Bangalore, that you might have the story
exactly as related to me by my mother.

" Let me reply to your questions as given.

" (1) ' Did my mother always speak of the incidents as waking experi-
ences, not mere dreams 1 '

" My mother never spoke of either but as ' waking experiences.' She
was very distinct upon that point. She was quite sure of having been, in
both cases, wide awake when she saw what she described.

" (2) ' Was I old enough to recollect whether I heard of the second
experience before the news of death arrived ? '

" I have a distinct recollection (for the scenes made a great impression
upon me) of the news of my Aunt Fanny's death being taken and broken
to niy father by my mother ; his great grief ; and of my mother's anxiety
before and about the coming of the letters, and of her depression (she was
naturally of a bright, cheerful disposition) before the letters came, which I
could not at the time understand, but which I have since felt was due to

1 See Vol. i., pp. 550-1.

2 Compare cases 194, 449, and see Vol. i., p. 555.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 479

her anticipation of coming sorrow. I was seldom away from either my
father's or mother's side in those days, and must have been about 5 years
old, and could well recollect things of a striking character which took
place then. My earliest recollection is of the death of my eldest, and,
then, only sister, which took place when I was a child of between 2 and 3
years of age. Of this I can of course only dimly remember the circum-
stances, and merely mention it here to show that I was very impressionable
as a child, and began to remember much earlier than the date of my Aunt
Fanny's death. I have no doubt in my own mind, therefore, of the
phenomenon having occurred to my mother as described by her.

" (3) ' (a) Am I aware as to whether my mother was in the habit of
having similar visitations or visions which did not correspond with any-
thing ? or (6), of her being subject to hallucinations ? '

" (a) I am not aware of any such. I do know, however, of one occur-
rence which took place in February or March, 1857, whilst I was staying,
en route to India, with my father and mother at Pisa.

" I remember my mother came down to breakfast one morning greatly
agitated, and told us (my father and me) that she had been awakened
during the night by something unusual occurring, and saw distinctly a
curious flame-like light1 at the end of her bed, which took no definite shape
but faded away and left the room again dark. She said she was quite
sure that something had happened to a near relative who was then in
London. My father tried to reassure my mother, but she was not to be
dissuaded from her presentiment of evil. A few days afterwards
we received letters from England informing us that the relative in
question had had a sudden and dangerous illness — in fact, a dangerous
miscarriage — on the night in question.

" (6) I never heard of any other case of vision, or otherwise, occurring
to my mother, nor am I aware of my mother having been subject in any
way to hallucinations of the senses.

" The occurrences I have mentioned were wide apart as regards time.
The first when my mother was a girl about 16 or 17 ; next, as a
woman of about 33 ; and last when she was 47 years of age."2

Before this account was received, the second of the two incidents had
been described to us by a clergyman, distantly connected with Lady
Sewell, who had heard her narrate it, and had himself seen the lock of
hair. Though correct as to the main fact, his version, when compared
with the above, illustrates the difference which intimate connection with
the original witness makes in the value of second-hand testimony (see pp.
322 and 539, note). The figure is represented as having appeared " in her
shroud, dripping wet, and with her black hair cut quite short " ; and " on
allowing for difference of longitude, it was found that the hour of the
vision corresponded with the hour of the death." Colonel Fane SewelPs
account, it will be observed, merely states that the night corresponded.

(516) From the Rev. H. C. D. Chandler, Waterbeach Vicarage,
Cambridge. His sister, whose experience is recorded, is out of health, *
and he would prefer not to have her troubled for a first-hand account.

1 Compare cases 253 and 553, and see pp. 193-4.

2 With respect to the occurrence of several telepathic experiences to the same
percipient — exemplified in E. Hobson's and Colonel Fane Sewell's cases — see p. 22, note,
and p. 77.

480 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" 1883.

" The following occurred about 5 o'clock a.m., on October 28th, 1853.
My sister, then Eliza Chandler, was visiting friends in the neighbourhood
of Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland. Her mind was quite composed, and
her health perfectly good. She was surrounded by kind friends and was
of a gay and bright disposition, not in the least inclined to morbidness.
She had known that her mother was in declining health generally.

" She retired to rest on the Thursday evening as usual. About 5
o'clock on Friday morning she awoke suddenly, and as it seemed without
cause, when she immediately became conscious of her mother's form at the
foot of her bed. She sat up and gazed intently. She describes her
mother's form as though she had risen from her couch, and the face was
fixed with an earnest and loving gaze upon her child. The length of time
the form remained I do not remember, or whether that time was
mentioned I do not remember. My sister could not rest, but rose
and dressed, greatly agitated. She at once wrote to inquire if all was
well, and begging to hear from us.

" At the hour above named, I was watching by my mother's bedside
[at Bristol], she having been seized with hernia during a severe fit of
coughing. My mother had sunk rapidly, and a letter of mine, stating the
nature of the illness and its probable issue, had crossed my sister's letter
to me. At the hour of 5 o'clock, I was struck with the change of my
mother's appearance, and ran to call a sister, who was sleeping near. On
applying a glass to the mouth, we found that the breathing had ceased,
and our mother was gone to her rest. The same morning I wrote to
Ireland telling the sad news, receiving the next day my sister's letter telling
of the strange apparition she had seen.

" My sister is married and settled in Australia ; but she could add
but little more to the above account, for each particular was written
indelibly on my memory. " H. C. D. CHANDLER."

In answer to inquiries as to whether he was certain that the
apparition had preceded the arrival of his letter announcing his mother's
critical condition, he replied : —

" Our letters crossed — mine containing the details of my mother's last
days, and my sister's telling the story of the apparition. Her letter must
have been written — as far as we could calculate, I remember — the morning
after my mother's death, and solely in consequence of the apparition."

The Bristol Times confirms the fact that Mrs. Chandler died on Friday,
Oct. 28, 1853.

(517) From Lady Miles, Leigh Court, Bristol.

"August 1st, 1885.

" My mother, Lady Roche (wife of the late Sir David Roche, of Carap
Groom, County of Limerick, Ireland) was very much beloved by her cousin,
the [Right] Hon. John Vandeleur, and at the moment of his death he
came to say good-bye to her. She woke from sleep at 4 a.m., and saw him,
wrapped up in something black, standing near the lower curtain of her
bed. She woke her husband, and said, ' Why, there is the Hon. John at
the bottom of the bed ! ' Sir David told her she was dreaming, and to rub
her eyes ; but, as she still affirmed it, he got up and pulled the curtain
away, lit the candles, and stood where she said the appearance was. She

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 481

said, ' I see him now, standing next you, waving his hand in farewell to
me.' He faded away, and disappeared. It was afterwards known that
this gentlemen died 50 miles off, of a paralytic seizure.

" A brother of this lady, Mr. George Vandeleur, of Ballynamona,
Co. Clare, also saw his servant at the moment of his death. The man was
sent to Limerick on an errand, got drunk, and fell off a cart, the wheel of
which passed over his throat.

" These two cases are quite authentic, and known to many people.

" F. E. MILES."

We find the date of Mr. J. Vandeleur's death given in Saunders'
Newsletter as November 9, 1828.

In answer to inquiries, Lady Miles says : —

" With regard to my mother seeing the Hon. John Vandeleur. She
saw him a few minutes after his death. She was living at a house in
Limerick, and he died at Kilrush. I heard the account from my father
and mother dozens of times when a girl. My mother was not an
imaginative woman, or inventive. She died in 1841. I have 'been living
over 30 years in England, and have a good deal lost sight of anyone who
could authenticate all this, though everyone knew about it at the time.

" My uncle who saw his servant is dead. It happened at Carap,
Co. Limerick, about the year 1836."

In conversation, Lady Miles told me that her uncle was dressing in the
morning, when, looking round, he saw the figure of his servant, with blood
about it, and addressed it, thinking it was the man himself. She was in the
house at the time, and later she heard the account from her uncle's own lips.

(518) From Mme. Vavin, nee Girard, a relative of our friend, M. Ch.
Richet, who copied the account from a letter addressed to himself.

" 1885.

" Ma mere, e*tant veuve, avait e'te' tres aime'e et demande'e en mariage
par un jeune professeur de Caen. Ayant quitte* la ville et e'pouse' M.
Caillaux, elle avait cesse' toute relation avec M. Roger, et n'en entendit
plus parler depuis trois ou quatre ans. Une nuit, ^tant absolument
e'veille'e, elle vit une forme blanchatre, comme une vapeur,1 se pencher trois2
fois sur son lit, comme pour lui dire adieu. Elle eut alors, sans pouvoir
s'en rendre bien compte, le sentiment que c'e'tait M. Roger qui lui disait
adieu. Tres dmue, elle ne parla de la chose & personne ; mais, une
huitaine de jours apres, elle apprit la mort de M. Roger, mort survenue la
nuit m£me ou elle avait eu cette apparition. Elle ne le savait pas malade."

Mme. Vavin adds the following experience of her own : —

" Pour moi, mes souvenirs sont plus vagues, e"tant plus lointains.
Mon pere est mort k peu pres subitement. Je 1'avais quitte" la veille, au soir,
gai et bien portant. Dans la nuit une voix, comme un souffle, et pour
ainsi dire sans parole,3 me fit comprendre que mon pere e*tait mort Le
lendemain, lorsque on entra dans ma chambre, je mejetai en pleurant dans
les bras de ma bonne en lui disant, ' Je sais que papa est mort.' Je
n'avais vu ni forme, ni apparition d'aucune sorte. J'avais neuf ans.

" MARGUERITE VAVIN."

1 See case 193, and the first note thereto. 2 See p. 229, note.

3 This was probably an instance of the inward and soundless form of hallucination
described in Vol. i., p. 480.

VOL. II. 2 I

482 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

(519) From Miss Osborne, 10A, Cunningham Place, N.W. .. jggS.

" This story I have heard my mother relate, but as she and my aunt
(to whom this incident occurred) are both dead, I can only tell it as I
remember it. I was a child when it happened. My aunt, Mrs. Fairman,
was living in Portugal, and had not been in London for some years. Her
half-sister (with whom she had no especial sympathy) married a Mr.
Moore, whom Mrs. Fairman had never seen. About a year after that
marriage, Mrs. Fairman was making arrangements to give a party. One
night she awoke, and saw her sister sitting by her bedside, and a gentle-
man standing by her.1 She heard her sister say, 'I shall die, I shall die ! '
She woke her husband, and told him what she had seen. He, angry at
being disturbed, said it was all nonsense. At last she slept, but woke again,
seeing the same thing.2 She again woke her husband, who used stronger
language than before. So impressed was Mrs. Fairman with the feeling she
should hear of the death of her sister, that she ordered all arrangements
for the proposed party to be stopped; and in the time a letter could reach
her, one came to say Mrs. Moore had died at the time she had seen her.

" I think it was about two years after this, Mrs. Fairman returned to
England. She had never seen any portrait of Mr. Moore, who was a
very ordinary person, with no marked characteristics. She was walking
with my mother in Oxford Street, when she suddenly said, ' Mary, that is
the man I saw with Julia at my bedside.' It was really Mr. Moore."

[The final incident here recalls the conclusion of the Wynyard case
(No. 357), where there is some doubt what the exact facts were ; but the
point is not one likely to have crept into either narrative without some
foundation. The fact that Miss Osborne's mother was a witness of the
recognition makes the account a second-hand (not a third-hand) one, as
far as that item is concerned.]

(520) From a lady, known to the present writer, who prefers that her
own name should not be printed. The evidence is on a par with second-
hand (Vol. I., p. 158, note). "Aug. 25th, 1886.

" My father was a marine officer on board his Majesty's ship — — .
Crossing the Atlantic, in the course of the voyage, the medical gentleman
told him that his mother had appeared to him and distinctly said,
' Andrew, Andrew, mend your ways, or you will never be where I am.'
Sir James Malcolm [the narrator's father] advised him to write down the
date and hour, which Dr. Douglas 3 did, and afterwards wrote that his
mother had died the day and hour precisely as she appeared to him. I
have often heard my father mention the circumstance."

Another daughter of Sir J. Malcolm's writes (Sept. 23, 1886), "I
have often heard the story of Dr. Campbell's vision — it was not a
dream — told to Sir J. in the morning, who advised him to note it down."
She thinks that the incident took place in the West Indies, in 1806 or
not long after, and gives the name of the ship as the " Canopus." We have
ascertained from the Record Office that the " Canopus " was in the West

1 As to the appearance of the second figure, compare case 511 above, and see Vol. i.,
pp. 545-6.

3 Compare case 503, and see p. 237, note.

3 The name seems to have been Campbell. The mistake is due to the fact that Sir
J. Malcolm had another medical friend, named Douglas, to whom this incident was known.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 483

Indies at that time, but that no doctor of the name of Campbell was
officially attached to her during the years 1806-12.

[We may charitably hope that the words heard were a contribution of
the percipient's own mind, and merely betokened a wholesome sense of
parental superiority. I have drawn attention to the suspicious exactitude
of the coincidence in many of the second-hand cases.]

From Mr. Edward Butler, 7, Park Square, Leeds. I do not number
the case, as the evidence is possibly third-hand. « June 21st, 1884.

" The enclosed account of my brother's apparition has been read by my
cousin Fanny, a lady of singular accuracy of mind and entire trust-
worthiness, who was one of the first (if not the first) to hear the tale, from
my mother herself, I think. It exactly agrees with her recollection, and
may, I fully believe, be relied on as accurate.

" In the year 1857, my brother was in the Civil Service of India, and
was stationed in Bengal as a judge or magistrate and collector. For
anything we knew he was perfectly well, and had very good prospects in
his profession. One morning early — it was the height of summer — my
mother was lying awake, and it was clear dawn. She saw my brother stand
at the foot of her bed. There was nothing noticeable in his dress. His
face wore an exceedingly tranquil and pleasant expression, and my mother
felt no fear. I do not know how long the vision lasted. When it dis-
appeared my mother woke my father, and said, 'I have seen Wells.' They
made a note of the day and hour. There was no Indian telegraph in those
days, and some weeks elapsed before they received from an official source
in India news of my brother's sudden death, which must have taken place
just about the time of the apparition. My brother's appearance was
always regarded by my mother as a merciful and kindly thing. It pre-
pared her for the news, and broke the shock.

" I think my mother was by organisation open to delicate impulses or
impacts from subtle exterior agencies, if such there be ; for I remember
her telling me, amongst other things now forgotten, that once she had an
unaccountable conviction that she ought to go and see an old schoolfellow,
who had been long separated from her, and whose very name, indeed, she
had almost ceased to recall. She subsequently heard that this old school-
fellow had died about that time, and on her deathbed had said, ' Oh, I wish

I could see Anne ,' naming my mother's maiden name.

" EDWARD BUTLER."

We find from the East India Service Register and from Alleris Indian
Mail; that Mr. Wells Butler died on June 20, 1859 (not 1857)— which
accords with the above statement that the time was " the height of summer."

Miss Frances Butler, of 11, Gloucester Road, Teignmouth, on being
asked whether she heard the account from the percipient's, Mrs. H. Butler's,
own lips, replied (on April 19, 1886) that she could not recollect whether
she heard it from Mrs. H. Butler or from her own mother, Mrs. H.
Butler's sister. A sister of Mr. Butler's tells Professor Barrett that she
remembers being told of this incident shortly after it took place. Mr. Butler
regrets not having questioned his mother on the subject, but he feared to
make her uncomfortable.

(521) From Mr. David Crombie, 2, Breakspear Road, St. John's, S.E.
VOL. n. 2 i 2

484 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" 1884.

" My eldest brother, John, left home when I was very young, to become
an apprentice to Captain Wallace, trading to the East Indies. [He had
been away for about three years, but was returning, and was daily expected,
when] my mother had a vision in which she saw him, wearing a most careworn
and anxious look, enter the bedroom, and so distinct was the vision that
she awoke my father, who was sleeping at her side, exclaiming, ' John,'
(my father's name), ' there's Johnnie.' He immediately sat up, and
subsequently got out of bed, and went out on to the landing to see if his
boy had really arrived ; finding all quiet, and having gone downstairs to
see if the front door were fastened, he returned to bed, not over well
pleased at having been sent on this wild-goose-chase.

" Next night, about the same time, my mother declared she again saw
Johnnie, looking so flushed and ill, and again called my father's attention
to the apparition, which, however, he did not see,1 and on this occasion he
did not leave his bed. On the third night she again saw the apparition,
this time as white as a sheet ; it smiled and passed away.
My father saw what a deep impression these visions had made on her
mind ; and, without her knowing it, he made an entry in cypher on the fly-
leaf of the old folio family Bible, to see if it were possible that his death
could have been foretold in this extraordinary way.

" The visions had indeed made an indelible and sorrowful impression on
my mother's mind, and, as the saying goes, she was full of it ; and to her
immediate and most intimate friends she -had related all the circumstances,
and her own fears in connection with them. Of those to whom she had
communicated the facts were Mrs. and Miss Wallace, mother and sister
respectively of the captain with whom my brother sailed ; Misses Jarvis,
two maiden aunts ; Miss Bartlett and Mrs. Lowe, widow of a sea-captain.

" As time wore on the vessel at length arrived, and shortly thereafter
a letter was delivered with a black seal, announcing my brother's illness
and death, which, on reference to the memorandum, occurred at the very
time the dreams were dreamed. The captain, in writing, gave an extract
from the entry in the log. Then my father, who had no faith in dreams,
for the first time in his life was compelled to admit that in this case there
seemed to be good grounds for believing in them.

" On the morning following the announcement of my brother's death,
I was requested to deliver a number of notes with intimation of his death
to many of our personal friends ; amongst them were those whose names I
have given above. On my return home, I was naturally asked what they
had said after reading the notes. Mrs. Wallace said, ' Dear me, then
Effie's ' (my mother's name) ' dream has come true.' A similar remark
was made by her aunts, the Misses Jarvis. Mrs. Lowe sent condolences,
and said my mother's fears had been too well founded.

" As I did not understand what they referred to I asked what they
meant, and for the first time I learned all the particulars ; and although I
could only have been between 6 and 7 years old, [55 years ago] the
facts left an impression on my mind that time has not effaced. Of
course, the story was often repeated in my presence afterwards, thereby
keeping it fresh in my memory, and I can vouch for the truth of the
details so far as came under my personal knowledge. " D. C."

1 See p. 105, second note.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 485

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Crombie says : —

" The parties named are dead from 25 to 40 years ago. My brother
died of scarlet fever, which ran its course with remarkable swiftness.
The death occurred on the day my mother had the third dream."

[In conversation on July 28th, 1884, Mr. Crombie told me that he
remembers seeing the entry in the Bible, after the news arrived,
and that it was pointed to as proof of the correspondence of dates. He
describes his mother as the very opposite of a visionary. The visions were
naturally enough regarded as dreams by the persons to whom they were
told ; but Mr. Crombie is convinced that his mother was awake, and points
to his father's conduct, on being woke, as evidence of this. I must point
out that a repetition of the sort here described, on three successive nights,
has not been alleged in any of our first-hand telepathic cases ; l and it is
the kind of detail that may very naturally have got imported into the
narrative (see p. 229, note ; but see also p. 237, note). But it is not, of
course, vital to the evidence.]

(522) From Miss J. Connolly, of 21, Wickham Road, New Cross,
S.E., head-mistress of a high school for girls. « April 4th 1885

" One Christmas my father was invited to spend his college vacation
with a very dear and valued friend, a Mrs. Brown. However, as he was
also invited by my grandfather, he preferred to accept that invitation,
glad of the opportunity of meeting my mother. The house was a large
one, and full of Christmas guests. One night there was a dinner-party of
friends from the neighbourhood. After dinner such a storm arose that my
grandmother found herself obliged to provide everyone with beds for the
night. . . . My grandmother, to arrange for her unexpected company,
gave up the young men's bedrooms to the ladies, and turned the library
into a sort of barrack room for the night.

"At 3 o'clock, my Uncle William spoke to my father, who was sleeping
near him, and said, 'James, who are you talking to; what are you saying?'
My father raised himself up, looked at his watch, and replied, ' I
have seen a vision. Mrs. Brown has been standing at my feet, and she
said, " Good-bye, James ! I wished greatly to see you, to say good-bye
to you before I left this world, and I have now come to you. Serve God
and be a good man, and He will prosper and bless you. I have loved
you so dearly from the time you were a boy, that I had to say good-bye.
But let us meet again." She waved her hand and disappeared.'

" Both the young men were much impressed, and in the morning my
father told my grandmother of the dream or vision. She advised him to
write an ordinary letter, just inquiring about Mrs. Brown and her
daughters. Letters then cost tenpence, and were not written on slight

1 Since this was written, however, I have received an account from Mrs. Perryn, of
27, Adrian Square, Westgate-on-Sea, in which she states that, when crossing the Atlantic
in November, 1863, she dreamt with unusual vividness, on three successive nights, that a
fire broke out in the cellar of her brother's house, and that he was wrapped in names — the
fact being that on the first of the three nights he was fearfully injured by an explosion of
some chemicals with which he was experimenting in his cellar. Mrs. Perryn did not know
that he experimented with chemicals ; can recall no other instance of dreams repeated on
successive nights ; is not in the habit of having distressing dreams ; and described the
accident in writing to her sisters " exactly as it happened," before hearing the news. But
a dream-experience is, as we have seen, indefinitely weaker evidence than an analogous
case of the "borderland " or the waking class.

486 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

occasions. My father did write, but a letter crossed his, saying that at 3
o'clock on the very night of his dream, Mrs. Brown had died, and her
last conscious words were regrets that she had not been able to see him
to say good-bye.

" My father never much liked telling this story. He firmly believed
he had seen a vision. I have heard it from his lips, and I have seen the
two letters which crossed each other in the post. My father was the
Rev. James Campbell Connolly, Chaplain of Woolwich Dockyard."

In reply to inquiries, Miss Connolly writes, on April 9, 1885 : —

(1) " The two letters that crossed in the post were among my mother's
papers, and I have failed to find them. She died when I was quite a
child, and I heard her tell the story and show the letters, not thinking that
I was listening. My dear father died just two years ago, in the full
possession of his faculties, and I heard it twice from his own lips.

(2) " The date is difficult. My father married in 1840, and I should
say, judging from his ordination, &c., that it must have been between
1830 and 1835. Mrs. Brown's daughters are both dead — Mrs. Daly, who
married the last Warden of Galway, and Mrs. Foley. Both these ladies
told me the story. They were present at their mother's deathbed.

(3) "I am certain my father described the apparition as speaking
directly to him."

[In no first-hand case has the sensory impression included so long a
remark as that here recorded. If accurately remembered, it probably
indicates that the percipient was more asleep than awake ; but his experi-
ence must apparently have been very unlike an ordinary dream.]

(523) From Mrs. B., an Associate of the S.P.R., whose full name we
are at liberty to mention, but not to print. « October 30th 1884

"When I was about 16 years old, my father came down to breakfast
one morning, and, after saying he had been awake a long time, he said,

' and about 5 or 6 ' (I forget the exact time) ' I saw old Mr. ; he

came and stood by the bed a minute or two, and then went.' In the
course of the day we heard of the death of this old gentleman, of whose
illness we had previously known, but whose death we had not anticipated,
as it was not thought his complaint was one likely to cause death. On
inquiry, we learnt that he had died at the hour that my father had said
he had had a visit from him.

" My father was a merry, strong-minded man, with a scientific turn of
mind and a great scorn of superstition. He is, alas ! now dead some years,
and I don't think we any of us thought more of the circumstance than that
it was odd, but I remembered it."

We find from the Register of Deaths that Mr. - — died on January
10th, 1866, aged 58, the cause of death being a contused wound on the
skin, which brought on erysipelas.

(524) From Mrs. Field, 16, Clifton Road, Brighton. Her mother
being old, we did not press for a first-hand account. "June 1884.

"In the year 1840, my grandfather, Sir L. S., was appointed Gover-
nor of the Island of Mauritius ; and my mother went to see him and take
leave of him. My grandfather was getting old, and my mother was in a

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES.- 487

very delicate and precarious state of health, so the probabilities were
strong that she would never see her father again, and so it turned out.

" My mother [who was living at Cheltenham] had been sitting up late
one night, writing her Indian letters, intently finishing one to her husband,
which for some reason she had rather delayed finishing, and which, as
next day was mail-day, must be finished that night. It was winter time,
and the fire was burning quite brightly in the grate for some little time
after my mother went to bed, which, on account of her Indian letter, she
had not been able to do till past 12 o'clock. She was lying broad awake,
and the room was lighted quite well by the firelight. She had not been
thinking of anything but her Indian letter, and she could not have had the
least notion or fear her father was dead, as he had died suddenly, after a
kind of seizure, from which he only recovered to speak a few articulate
words — but the fact that he had been ill never reached England until the
public official news arrived giving the news of his death, together with the
usual private letters giving all the details. My mother was wide awake.
The bed — an old-fashioned fourpost — faced the fireplace, and on the side
next the window the curtains were closely drawn. Suddenly my mother
saw a very tall figure of a man (my grandfather was unusually tall) pass the
foot of her bed slowly. She called out, ' Who's there ? ' in great fright, and
as she called a hand opened the curtains on the side where they closed, and
the same figure was there. My mother sprang out of bed and ran into the
next room, where the dear old ' C.' [a head-nurse] slept with my two little
sisters, almost babies. One of these little sisters had given the old faith-
ful servant the name of ' Tootoo.' My mother rushed into the babies'
room calling out, 'Tootoo, there's a man in my room, please get up and call
the servants. There are robbers in the house.'

" After going back with her mistress, and putting her to bed, the nurse
got a scrap of paper, and wrote down the hour and minute my mother had
rushed into the night-nursery — she, ' Tootoo,' feeling some bad news was
coming, and that my mother had seen no living man. The very next
Mauritius mails brought the public papers, stating that at such a time,
giving the minutes even, the guns from the fort gave notice to the Island
that the Governor's late illness had ended fatally. It appeared that his last
words had been of his daughter. The time noted down by ' Tootoo ' and
the official announcement of his death exactly agreed.

" CHARLOTTE E. FIELD."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Field says : —

"1. I have often heard my mother's experience from her own lips; but
I Was only a child at the time, and she went back to India about three
years after, to rejoin my father, who was a Bombay Civilian, and I did not
hear her speak of this experience of hers till she came home again. This
would be in all quite 10 years after my grandfather's death, but ' Tootoo '
used often to talk to me about it, when she was with us, as I have men-
tioned in the account I sent you. I never saw the entry of date. ' Tootoo '
used often to say to me it was a pity perhaps she had not kept it. Site
did keep it for some little while, but in moving house she lost it. It was
just hastily pencilled down on a morsel of paper.

"2. The difference of longitude was carefully accounted for. My
mother's 'apparition,' or whatever it was, came to her between 12 and 1
at night — nearer 1 than 12.

488 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" 3. No, I have never heard that my mother ever saw any other vision.
She is, I should say, not an imaginative person, and, besides, as she had no
idea her father was even ill, she could not have imagined she saw him, and
no one ever mentioned to her the fact of ' Tootoo's ' entry of date till the
official date came home in the public papers ; and then my mother remarked
to 'Tootoo,' who often told me what she had said, 'Oh, then, 'Tootoo,' that
must have been my father I saw that night I was so frightened — not a
robber as I thought.' My mother has often told us she had made this
remark to ' Tootoo.' "

The Army List confirms the date of Sir L. S.'s appointment, and gives
January 2nd, 1842, as the date of his death. The Mauritius Register and
the Times add that he died suddenly.

(525) Mr. Thomas Young, of Elsinore House, Robert Road, Hands-
worth, Birmingham, sent us an account of the following incident, as
"often related" to him by his mother (resident at 71, Highbury Hill, N.).
We asked him to apply to her for a first-hand account, which she gave
in the following letter to him, and afterwards viva voce to the present
writer. Her version, which was given independently, corresponds exactly
with his ; which is some proof that the facts have not been distorted, in
recent years at any rate, through lapse of memory.

"January 10th, 1885.

" MY DEAR SON, — You ask me to relate Aunt Lucy's dream 1 it was
not a dream, but a reality. You must know that Uncle Bennet was a
small farmer, with a large family of 12 children, consequently some had to
go away from home. They lived in a small village, Trelyon, near St.
Ives, Cornwall. Now, what I am going to relate is about their daughter
Betsy, who had taken a situation — I think at St. Ives, One morning
aunt woke up and saw, standing by her bedside, this daughter, with her
hair streaming all over her face, dripping wet, and she, poor thing, look-
ing half drowned. Aunt said, ' Betsy, where have you come from ? ' The
weather being frightfully bad, she thought she had walked home through
the wet. She told her to go and dry herself, but she vanished away.
Poor aunt was dreadfully alarmed. They sent to her place, and it appears
she would go to Plymouth, and went in a little sailing-vessel, and that
very morning the vessel was lost and all hands perished. Now, my dear
son, I can vouch for every word being true, for aunt was a true Christian
woman. I was a girl when she told me the unhappy incident, but it
always made a most vivid impression on me. — Believe me, dear son, your
loving mother, " C. YOUNG."

In conversation Mrs. Young mentioned that she heard of this inci-
dent within a day or two of its occurrence, and that from her aunt's
manner it made a very strong impression on her. She was about 14 at
the time, which would make the date about 1825. Her aunt was a busy,
practical woman, with no turn and no time for fancies. The cause of the
girl's sudden departure, Mrs. Young thinks, was not known. We have
endeavoured to find a record of the accident, but have failed, not knowing
the name of the vessel.

(526) From Miss Caulfield, 1, Hyde Park Mansions, N.W. Her father
was Commander Edwin T. Caulfield, of Raheendufie, Queen's Co., and of
Beckford House, Bath.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 489

"December 8th, 1883.

" When my father was at sea in H.M.S. ' Lavinia,' he was very
intimate with two midshipmen, John Frederick J., and T. [The full
names were given in confidence.] They had as yet formed but few
opinions as to the truth of Divine Revelation ; although all more or less
religiously disposed, and anxious to learn. The fact of there being a
future state, and that one of probation or retribution, was more especially
under discussion between them. To solve this mystery for the survivors,
they pledged themselves to one another, that were it permitted to give an
intimation of the reality of an existence after death, the man that died
first should show himself to the others.1

" My father was taken prisoner, and was by great interest placed on
his parole, during two years in France ; and one night, — whether waking
or sleeping, he said he could not tell— he saw T. appear. At once he
realised the fact that he was dead, and that he had come to redeem his
promise. He asked him whether he was happy ; to which the apparition
replied by slowly swaying his head to and fro, with a sad expression, and
a sound as of the clanking of chains accompanied the gesture. He then
vanished. How soon afterwards my father received news of his friend, I
am unable to say ; but he was informed of his having been killed on board
ship by the fall of a ' block ' from the rigging (I think during action),
which caused instantaneous death.

" John Frederick J. had passed his examination, and was a
lieutenant at the time of his death. My father was again in bed —
whether awake, in a trance, or sleeping, he could not say ; he believed he
was dreaming, but it seemed like being awake. His friend and shipmate
J. appeared to him. At once recognising the fulfilment of the agree-
ment made between them, he knew that he was dead ; and asked him the
same question as he did his friend T. ; to which an exactly similar
reply was made, i.e., by the slow swaying of the head, accompanied by the
sound as of the clanking of chains. In due time my father was apprised of
the death of this friend also ; who had had his arm and shoulder blade torn
away by a cannon ball, at the storming of Algiers. My sister and I both
perfectly recollect hearing this story from our father on several occasions.

" S. F. A. C."

Miss Caulfield's sister also signs her initials, " L. L. A."

From an examination of the ship's books of H.M.S. " Lavinia," at the
Record Office, we find that " T." joined that vessel in the same year as
Miss Caulfield's father, 1806, and that he was killed by the fall of a top-
rail-on July 14, 1808. " J." has also been traced on the books of the
" Lavinia," and seems to have left that ship in 1810. We have received
from the Record Office a certificate to the effect that he was dangerously
wounded in the attack on Algiers on Aug. 27, 1816, and that his " left
arm was removed at the shoulder-joint." We find from the Gentleman's
Magazine that his death followed on Oct. 3.

If the clanking of chains 2 really formed a feature in both these

1 As to compacts of this sort, see p. 66. On the telepathic theory, the apparent fulfil-
ment of the compact is of course due to a telepathic impulse transmitted before, not after,
death.

2 1 must point out that this sound, being a common feature in ghostly legends, is one
not unlikely to get imported into a second-hand version even of a genuine telepathic case
See the remark on the prevalence of the number three, p. 229, note.

490 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

experiences, it seems an excellent instance of the percipient's investi-
ture of the telepathic impression with his own dream-imagery
(Vol. I., p. 539).

The next case ought perhaps to be classed as a dream. But the
sense of someone's entrance into the room, and presence by the bed
which the perceiver is conscious of actually occupying, is very
characteristic of a semi- waking state, and is not, I think, a common
feature in dreams which are afterwards distinctly recognised as such.

(527) From the Rev. S. W. Hanks (District Secretary of the American
Seamen's Friend Society, and well known to Professor William James, of
Harvard, a Corresponding Member of the S.P.R.).

" Congregational House, Boston.

"April 25th, 1884.

" Two of my three brothers were sailors. The eldest (D wight) went to
sea when he was 11 years old, and was at sea most of the time until his
death, at the age of 25 years. On one of his voyages he was wrecked, and
remained on the wreck nine days without food or drink. After this my
mother never saw him, though by a letter from him to my other brother
she had heard the particulars about the wreck, from which he was taken
off by a passing vessel. On the night of December 5th, 1829, my mother
dreamed that he was dead. When she arose in the morning she was
much affected, and during the day she was weeping nearly all the time.
When asked what made her think that Dwight was dead, she said that
in the night he came into her room, trembling, and looking very pale,
and said, ' Mother.' She said, ' Dwight, what is the matter 1 I will get up,
and do you come and lie down upon my bed.' He replied, ' No, mother,'
and walked out of the room. From that time she always spoke of his
death with the utmost confidence.

"In July, 1830, my other sailor brother was in New York, where he
was met by a stranger who asked him if he knew a sailor of the name of
Dwight Hanks ? He replied, ' I have a brother of that name from whom
I have not heard for a long time.' The stranger then said to him that a
man by the name of Dwight Hanks, about 25 years old, a little shorter
than himself, and a little lame from having broken one of his legs when he
was a boy, as he said, was killed on board the barque, ' Four Sons,' of a fall
from aloft during a storm, on the night of December 5th, 1829. 'The
vessel is now in port, and if you will go with me on board I will tell you
just where he fell. We buried him at sea, and his chest is on board the
vessel.' My brother went on board and found the statement of the
stranger corroborated. When my mother heard of it she said, ' This is no
news to me. I have never had a moment's doubt about Dwight's death
since the time of my dream.'

" These facts are well remembered by myself and my sister, now 80
years old. " S. W. HANKS."

Mr. Hanks writes to us on March 27th, 1885 : —

" I inquired of my sister if any memorandum of the date of my
mothers's dream was made at the time. She informs me that none has

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 491

been preserved. She informs me that a cousin of ours was risiting the
family at the time, who said of the dream : ' This is so remarkable that I
will make a memorandum of it.' He did so. He is now dead, and the
memorandum is lost. My sister is very confident about the date, as she
has letters which she thinks fix it. She is now in such a state of health
that she cannot attend to the matter. / did not keep the date, but
distinctly remember the fact."

(528) From Mrs. Monteith Brown, Oak Cottage, Hythe.

" 1884.

" The following is an account told me by my aunt, then Mary Noble,
of the appearance of her brother, Edward Meadows Noble, at the time of
his death. It took place in the night, and she was awoke by the
sound of water dripping,1 and saw, at the foot of her bed, her fourth
brother, a lieutenant in the navy, and then serving in China. She sprang
up exclaiming, ' Ned, what are you doing here ? ' when the figure vanished.
In due course of time, the news came of his having been drowned off
Amoy, in China, about the time of the appearance.

" E. ADELA BROWN."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Brown adds : —

" I heard the story direct from my aunt, who is since dead. On referring
to a naval biography, I find the date of my uncle's death was January 22nd,
1843." This date is confirmed by the United Service Magazine.

[This is perhaps a case of hereditary susceptibility (see p. 137, note) ;
for Mrs. Brown tells us that her grandfather, Admiral Noble, when
flag-lieutenant to Lord Nelson, had a vision, coinciding with death, of his
cousin, Jeffery Wheelock, who was serving with the Duke of York in
1794. But this is only family tradition.]

(529) From Mrs. Martin, housekeeper to Miss Anna Swanwick, 23,
Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, N.W., who considers that her
memory is accurate and trustworthy, in spite of advanced age.

" January, 1884.

"When I was about seven years old [about 1807], my cousin, Joseph
Newton, a youth of about 17 years of age, whose mother and stepfather
occupied a farm near Hawarden, and were tenants of Sir Stephen Glynn,
came to visit my mother in Liverpool. He was so delighted with the
shipping that he left the farm and entered the establishment of a shipwright.
About two years later, his mother, who rarely left home, presented herself
at my mother's house and said, ' I shall never again see Joseph. As I
lay awake last night, he appeared to me naked and dripping with water.
I know that he is drowned.' This proved to be the case. He had gone
with a companion to bathe in the Mersey, and had been carried away by
the current. Seven or eight days afterwards his body was seen floating
in the water, and was picked up by a packet.

" I remember my aunt's visit, and I remember attending my cousin's,
funeral. I cannot say that I actually heard my aunt relate her dream,
but I have often heard my mother tell the story. My mother and aunt
are both dead. I never heard that my aunt had any similar dream at
any other time. " SUSAN MARTIN."

1 Compare the next case, and cases 513, 535, 537 ; and see p. 26.

492 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Mrs. Martin further states that this was the only occasion on which
her aunt visited Liverpool.

It has been impossible to trace the date of this death, as it occurred
before the days of registration.

[If the narrator has really a recollection of her aunt's visit, which both
preceded the news of the death and was a consequence of the vision, her
evidence is not very far from being on a par with first-hand (Vol. I., p. 148).]

(530) From Miss Jameson, 6, Leamington Villas, Acton. She is the
youngest daughter referred to in the narrative, being at the time (1839)
10 years of age. Her father was residing in Norfolk.

" April 30th, 1884.

" On a bright moonlight night in January, 1839, an elderly gentleman
was lying dangerously ill. He was being carefully watched that night by
a daughter. During the hours of from 1 2 midnight to 2 o'clock, so peculiar
were his symptoms, the daughter thought her father dying or dead, and
yet there seemed anguish. In the morning, about 10 o'clock, the gentle-
man came downstairs. His youngest daughter was frightened to see her
father so altered, and well remembers his resting his elbow upon the
mantelpiece, with his forehead on his hand, and also saying, ' May my
Lord and Almighty Father in His Infinite mercy grant that I never may
pass through another such night.'

" On the same evening in Boulogne, the eldest son of the above thought
he would go home early that night ; bright and moonlight ; retired to rest
(but not to sleep) shortly after 12 ; the room quite light. Not feeling
sleepy, he half reclined, resting his head upon one hand. Presently he
saw his bedroom door gently open. He roused himself to look and see
who could be coming so quietly into his bedroom, when he saw his father
in his night-dress, with a silk handkerchief, which he distinctly recognised,
bound round his head. His father came to the foot of the bed, and stood
and gazed at his son, who steadily looked at him, pained to see his father
looking so ill. The father quietly withdrew, the door closed, the son
jumped out of bed, and dressed himself quickly, walked about the streets
of Boulogne with the watchman, to whom he related occurrence, at 6 a.m. re-
turned home, and wrote immediately to his sisters to inquire how his father
and all at home were. The letter caused great surprise, as it was an unusual
one. Some months after, he came home upon a visit, when he alluded to
letter, related above incident, and said ' Wait one minute. Just recollect
which silk handkerchief father had round his head. I will tell you which
I saw, and then you will see if I am right.' And he was right. My
father was never told of it. My brother died over 10 years since."

In answer to inquiries, Miss Jameson wrote : —

" The handkerchief which was round my father's head was, as well as
I can describe it, of an undecided pattern — colours blended — scarcely a
scroll, and yet a scroll pattern is the best name I can give ; an Indian
style ; a border round, with the colours less mixed ; red and yellow, but
not glaring ; it had been given him at High Wycombe. No two handker-
chiefs the same pattern. I remember two others very well ; both larger
in size ; one used to be called brindled ; no decided pattern, but the colours
woven in ; a lady would understand by my saying something of a Paisley

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 493

shawl pattern ; perhaps you will understand me better if I say the colours
were so mixed as to somewhat resemble the tapestry curtains of the
present day — where there is not a decided pattern.

"E. M. JAMESON."

In conversation Miss Jameson told me that she distinctly remembers
the arrival of this letter, and the sensation it caused. It was the fact of
its arrival that impressed on the minds of the family the coincidence of the
father's distress and the brother's anxiety. Miss Jameson gave a vivid
description of her father's aspect and words.

Miss Jameson has forwarded to us the following letter from her sister,
Mrs. Large. „ Grange Cottagej Taplow.

"November 15th, 1884.

" In answer to your request about dear father and William, it was
this, as near as I can remember. One night William woke up, whether
from any noise or influence I do not know, and saw a figure at the foot of
his bed, like father, with a countenance of extreme misery. He was
frightened, and covered himself up with bedclothes till daylight ; whether
he slept or not I know not. Upon comparing notes when he wrote to
know how we all were, it seems that night was the one father suffered so
intensely with the abscess, and thought he should not live. I remember
when he came down in the morning how haggard he looked ; he quite up-
set us. But he roused no one in the night — why I do not know. From
a remark he made, he was thinking of William during the night. That is
all I know. « M LARGE.»

Miss Jameson adds : —

" I think my own version is correct, for I am singularly correct in all
things bearing upon events of my childhood. I was 10, my sister 18. I
think the impression made upon my mind was more unmixed, as my
brother was anything but timid ; the covering himself up, I think, is mixed
with another matter. « jj. jyj, j "

(531) From Mrs. Harvey, 1, Rochester Road, Camden Road, N.W.

"February 26th, 1884.

" On February 8th, 1882, my eldest brother died at Croydon, at a
quarter past 6 in the morning. About 6 o'clock in the evening I received
notice of his death. I wrote that same evening to my aunt and uncle, at
Billericay, in Essex. My letter was received by them the next day. In
the. following July, I visited my aunt, and on speaking of my brother's
death she said : —

" ' On the morning before I received your letter I was lying awake,
when I distinctly saw the form of a tall man appear at my bedside, and
slightly bend over it.' I said, ' Did you really ? ' She said, ' That I
certainly did, and I awoke your uncle, and told him ; I could not discern
features, but I saw the form of a man as plain as could be. I did no£
know what to think it meant.' My aunt had not heard of his illness, for
it was not made known to even his wife that it was so serious ; his death
was therefore unexpected. " M. HARVEY."

We have confirmed the date and place of death by the Register of
Deaths.

494 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

We are requested not to publish the aunt's name. Mrs. Harvey, at
my request, wrote to ask her some questions, and I have seen the reply,
in which Mrs. Harvey's uncle, speaking of his wife, says, " All she can say
is that it was so " ; but he expresses the strongest dread and dislike of the
whole subject.

(532) From the late Mr. G. Wadsworth, the narrator of case 496 above.1

" October 21st, 1882.

"In 1837 my uncle was living in Birmingham. My father, then
living in Jersey, one morning got up in great perturbation, having seen
his brother dying, and said to my mother that he must go at once to
Birmingham. Communication was at that time not very convenient, and,
moreover, expensive, so that my mother naturally dissuaded a journey
upon such an extraordinary assumption ; but so convinced was my father
of the force of his vision, that he packed up his portmanteau ready for the
summons which he felt certain to receive ; and when a few days after he
got a letter from me, and a parcel from the executor notifying the death,
he at once started by return steamer.

" My uncle at the time, and for some short time previously, was
known to be ailing — not what could be called really dangerously. The
cause of his death occurred after I left him in the evening, and before my
calling in the morning, so that he may be said to have died suddenly, so
far as was known in Jersey."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death took place, very
suddenly, on July 29, 1837.

[Here again it is possible that the experience was a dream ; but the
impression made by it seems to have been of a very unusual kind.]

(533) From Mrs. Harnett, a near relative of our friend, Miss Porter,
who thinks that her memory may be fully trusted ; but the case is very
remote. " Hollybank, Kenley, Surrey.

"December, 1884.

" Having been requested to write down the particulars of an event
which occurred in the lives of my parents, I do so.

"In 1820, my father and mother, both being under 50 years of age,
and in perfect health, were staying in Liverpool (their residence being at
Whitehaven, in Cumberland),, names, Joseph and Ann Mondel.

" One night, the latter, sleeping peacefully, was awoke by the former
calling out : —

" ' Ann, I feel sure Anthony Mathers is dead.'

" ' What makes you think so 1 '

" ' He has just been at the bedside, and laid an icy-cold hand on my
cheek.'

" ' You must have been dreaming.'

" ' Oh, but my cheek is still cold.'

" The old and much-esteemed friend was, at the time, sojourning in
one of the West Indian islands. The season was known to be more than
usually sickly, so the thought of his danger might have engendered morbid

1 These two cases perhaps afford an example of family susceptibility (p. 132, note).

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 495

feelings. My father, as well as my mother, was content to rest in that
hope, during the weeks that must elapse ere the news of that night's
occurrences in Jamaica could reach England. News did arrive, and
stated that on the night referred to Mr. Mathers succumbed to a sudden
and most severe attack of yellow or other West Indian fever.

" As a child I first heard the tale, but often in my presence was it
repeated or referred to, later in life, without any change or amplification
of detail. " JANET HAENETT."

[We have failed to trace the exact date of the death.]

(534) From Miss Crommelin, 1, Edinburgh Mansions, Victoria Street,

S-W- " April, 1883.

" My brother, when at school, having gone to bed one summer's night in

a dormitory with several other boys, heard young C — , who slept next

to him, call out, ' Crommelin ! Look, there is my sister standing at the
foot of my bed — see ! ' My brother saw nothing, though he sat up.1 It was
after nine, but still light, if I remember rightly. Young C — - still per-
sisted he had seen her, in white. Next day came a telegram : the child in
question had died of heart disease, whilst saying her prayers at that very
hour — she had presumably also been wearing her white night-gown. As
my brother is now dead, and as we have no knowledge of the schoolfellow
in question, this cannot be more fully authenticated.

"MAY CROMMELIN."

In conversation, Mr. Podmore learnt that the boy's name was Close,
but Miss Crommelin does not know to what family of Closes he belonged.
The incident took place in 1858, or about that date, when her brother
was 12 years old, and she a little younger. She heard of it from her
brother soon after the event.

(535) From Mr. Arthur Bedford, Ant's Hill, Laugharne, St. Clears,
S. Wales. This account might have been included with the first-hand
evidence, but is placed here on account of its resemblance to the last.

"March 10th, 1884.

" At a large public school, one winter's morning, about dawn, all in our
dormitory were roused up by a fearful cry from one of my schoolfellows,
who declared that his father, dressed in a pea coat, with high boots on, had
appeared at his bedside, dripping wet. Some days afterwards an account
of the foundering of the vessel he commanded in Yarmouth Roads reached
him, and, as well as could be ascertained, the time of the loss of the vessel
corresponded with the appearance of this double of my schoolfellow's
father at his bedside. The body was recovered and found to be dressed as
described. I would like to give name and other circumstances, but the
widow of my schoolfellow is alive, and I do not know her present residence,
to ask permission for disclosing it. " ARTHUR BEDFORD."

(536) From Mrs. Gardiner, 30, Skene Street, Macduff, N.B., who
heard of the incident from her sister soon after its occurrence. The"
account was written in 1883. After narrating that about 40 years before,
when her father was tenant of Mill of Boyndie, a large farm about two
miles west of Banff, three men who had left his service one morning got

1 See p. 105, second note.

496 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

drunk, pushed out to sea in a boat, and were drowned, Mrs. Gardiner
continues : —

" In the meantime nothing whatever of the movements of these men
was known at the Mill of Boyndie ; but all the household retired to rest
at the usual hour. My sister, as was her custom, locked all the doors,
and placed the keys on a table beside her bed. She was awakened in the
middle of the night by one of the domestics coming to her, and asking for
the key of the kitchen door, as two of the three lads who had left in the
morning had just looked in at her bedroom window, as if they were in
want of something. She said she had asked them what they required,
but they had returned no answer, and having slowly moved down, left the
back of the house, where they were joined by the third one. [The premises
were searched without result.] A messenger arrived early next morning,
saying that the three young men had been drowned. My sister is now
dead, but I am certain, if she had been alive, she would have corroborated
the whole of the foregoing statement."

[The evidence here of course depends, not on the mere tale of a
frightened servant, but on the assurance of Mrs. Gardiner's sister that the
fright related to the apparition of certain persons whose death was not
known of till next day. A mistake of identity seems improbable ; as
though a servant, startled from sleep in the middle of the night, would be
likely enough to mistake friends seeking admittance for tramps or burglars,
she would not be likely to mistake tramps or burglars for friends. It
must be observed, however, that a joint apparition of three persons who were
all dying at the same time is not a type of which we have any first-hand
specimens ; and though such an event would quite admit of a telepathic
explanation, it suggests a certain infusion of the mythical element.
Clearly, a genuine telepathic incident may be unconsciously exaggerated
and improved, just as much as a spurious one.]

| 5. The remaining second-hand cases are from narrators who were
not relatives of the original .witnesses, but for the most part were
thoroughly intimate with them. None of the cases are the mere
recitals of stories casually picked up without any warranty as to
their bona fides.1

(537) Mr. Colchester, of Bushey Heath, Herts, sends us the following case
from a MS. work entitled Reminiscences of the Bermudas, written by his
late father, who at the time of the occurrence narrated was assistant-
surgeon in the Royal Artillery. The names of the two officers, Lieutenants

1 At the same time, these are specially the cases in respect of which the drawbacks
to transmitted evidence, which were described in Vol. i., pp. 149-57, must be carefully borne
in mind. For example, the narrator of the last case described to us how a friend of
hers, the late Dr. Smith, of Banff, when a medical student, woke and "distinctly
saw a brother," who, it proved, died at the time. But we afterwards obtained
an account from Mrs. Findlater, of Dufftown, N.B., a daughter of the percipient, in
which it was stated that he always expressly denied having seen any apparition, or
recognisable form. He was only conscious of his bed-curtains shaking, and of a
shadow passing before him. The point remains that a strong impression of his brother's
death was conveyed to him (though the death was quite unexpected), and that he rose
and marked the time in writing, and next day mentioned his experience to a friend,
Mr. Falconer. Still the case, already second-hand and remote, is so much weakened by
the correction that we do not include it in our evidence.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES, 497

Creagh and Listen, were given in initial in the MS. The author heard
of the occurrence from Lieutenant Creagh (whom he describes as "a
highly honourable man "), and made a written note of it, some months, or
perhaps a year, after it happened. The account is somewhat abridged.

" The passage from Bermuda to Halifax is in certain seasons hazardous,
and in 1830 a transport, containing over 200 men, foundered at sea
between these two ports. Two officers of the regiment to which the
detachment had belonged had, in a half-jesting way, made a sort of promise
that whoever died first should come back if he could, and let the other
know whether there was another world.1 This conversation was heard by
the narrator, as it took place in his presence, perhaps a year before the
events happened, though not remembered till afterwards. Liston embarked
in charge of the detachment, and had been gone about a fortnight, when
Creagh, who had one night left the mess early and had retired to bed, and
was beginning to close his eyes, saw his door open and Liston enter.
Forgetting his absence, and thinking he had come to pull him out of bed
(for practical joking was then more common in the army than it is now),

he cried, ' No, no ; d n it, Liston, don't, old fellow ! I'm tired ! Be

off ! ' But the vision came nearer the bed foot, and Creagh then saw that
Liston looked as if very ill (for it was bright moonlight), and that his hair
seemed wet, and hung down over his face like a drowned man's. The
apparition moved its head mournfully ; and when Creagh in surprise sat
up, rubbed his eyes, and looked again, it was gone. Still Creagh avers
that all this time he had no idea of its being a spectre, and believing that
he had seen Liston himself, he went to sleep. In the morning he related
the occurrence, when he recollected, but not till then, Liston's absence on
duty from the island. He asserts he had not lately been thinking of
Liston ; neither had the vessel been away long enough, nor had bad
weather occurred to cause fears for her loss to be entertained. That he
was wide awake, or at least not dreaming, is shown by his sitting up and
addressing the apparition."

We find from the Army List that Lieut. Liston was " lost on passage
home from Bermuda, on board the brig ' Bulow,' April, 1831," not 1830.

[It is impossible to say whether the vision occurred at the hour, or
even on the day, that the transport foundered.]

(538) From Miss Ann Hunt (a member of the Society of Friends),
9, Brunswick Square, Bristol.

"May 15th, 1884.

" At the time of Joan Pince's death, her son was in the employ of
Philip D. Tuckett, of Frenchay. I well remember hearing this son, John
Pince, relate how he had been aroused by the sound of his mother's voice,
calling him by name. It was early in the morning, but so strong was his
impression that his mother's decease was thus notified to him, that he got
up and went into his employer's room, saying that his mother was dead, and
that he must go at once to her home. At first endeavours were used to
dissuade him from his purpose, but finding how strong an impression had
been made on his mind, P. D. Tuckett kindly acceded, and John Pince
set off for his mother's residence, which was, I believe, in Devonshire.
On arriving, he found the event had taken place as he apprehended. I

1 See p. 66, and p. 489, first note.
VOL. II. 2 K

498 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

hoped to procure a written account of this circumstance, as a grand-
daughter of his, now living in Bristol, thought she had it in the hand-
writing of her mother, who is lately deceased. She has been unable to
find it, but fully confirmed the particulars I have given.

" John Pince died in 1854, aged 87 years ; and it may have been 7, or
possibly 10, years before that I heard him relate the occurrence" — at
which time, as Miss Hunt has stated in conversation, he was in complete
vigour, with senses unimpaired, and an excellent memory.

The following account of the same incident is from Miss Bowden, a
cousin of Miss Hunt's.

" One night in March, 1793, my grandfather, John Pince, was awoke
by a voice, which he believed to be his mother's, calling him by name,
' John, John ! ' He was so impressed by the feeling that his mother, Joan
Pince, whom he dearly loved, was ill or dying, that he immediately arose
and went to the Friend with whom he lived, and told him he must at once
set out for home, stating his reason for doing so. On reaching Newton
Bushel, he found that his mother had departed this life after a few hours'
illness, at the time which he had heard her call.

" These few particulars are all I know about the occurrence, but I
believe them to be correct, having heard them from my mother and aunt,
daughters of John Pince. " E. BOWDEN."

Miss Bowden has in her possession a letter written to Mr. Tuckett by a
friend of Joan Pince's, describing her short illness, and requesting that
her son's mind may be prepared for the intelligence of her death. It is
thus evident that he was not aware of her danger.

(539) From the Rev. Chas. C. Starbuck, M. A., Andover, Mass., U.S.A.,
who wrote in January, 1884. The account was communicated to him
by the late Hon. Richard Hill, of Jamaica, a Privy Councillor of the
island, the most eminent naturalist of the West Indies. Mr. Starbuck
mentions Mr. Hill's having quoted to him, with just gratification, a
sentence from a letter which he had received from Charles Darwin — " you
are an observer after my own heart."

" When Mr. Hill was yet young, he began to work against African
slavery, the curse of his native West Indies. Among others he visited the
Duke of Kent, in the hope of securing his influence ; and I may remark
that he lived to receive from the Duke's daughter, as his sovereign, the
Companionship of the Bath, as a token of appreciation of his many and
signal services both to science and humanity.

"Being a Jamaican born, and of mixed blood besides, he soon found
that it would be as much as his life was worth to return to his native
island. For a number of years he was an exile. White Englishmen,
however, though zealous abolitionists, though liable to much persecution,
and sometimes in considerable danger, could manage somewhat better to
keep their hold in the island. There was one friend and colleague of Hill,
an Englishman, I believe, named Lundy,1 who was working in Jamaica,
when his friend started from England in a sailing vessel for St. Thomas,

1 I may remark that, as it is easier to be sure of facts than names, I give the latter
only as they lie in my memory. — C. C. S.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 499

intending to proceed to Hayti. Hill and the captain occupied the main
cabin together, having their state-rooms on each side of it. One evening
when the vessel was about in the latitude of the Azores, the captain and
he were both in their state-rooms, while a large globe-lamp, swinging over
the table, partially lighted each. Hill was lying still awake, when he
heard a step in the cabin, which, he told us, he recognised the instant he
heard it. It passed through the cabin, and his friend Lundy appearing in
the door of his state-room, came up to the berth, and leaning on it, said :
' Well, Hill, I have served the cause as long as I could be useful ; and
now it has pleased God to take me.' He remarked that the words sank
ineffaceably into his mind, and the more so as they afforded so pleasing an
evidence of Lundy 's readiness to go. The next morning the captain said
to him : ' Why, Hill, you look as if you had had a day's hard raking.'
But his passenger kept his counsel.

" Just as they landed at St. Thomas, a vessel came in from Kingston,
and a young friend of Hill's sprang ashore. Saluting him, Hill said :
' I need not ask how Lundy is, for I know he is dead.' ' Why,' exclaimed
his friend, in astonishment, ' how could you know that ? I had but time to
see the funeral company into the church, and as the wind was fair, I was
obliged to hasten off to the vessel without going in.' ' No matter how I
know it,' replied Hill, ' you see I know it.' They soon parted, and Hill,
having completed his visit to Hayti, returned to England.

" Some two years later, Mr. Hill met in England a gentleman who first
had been a missionary in Jamaica, and subsequently in Africa. They fell
into talk about Lundy, and this gentleman remarked, ' I was with Lundy
when he died ; and I remember that his last words were : " The only wish
I have left is, that I might be permitted to see Hill once more, and say to
him — ' Well, Hill, I have served the cause as long as I could be useful ;
and now it has pleased God to take me.' " ' l It seems that his wish was
granted, and that he was permitted to go to Heaven by way of the Azores."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Starbuck writes to us : —

" Feb. 22, 1884.

" The narratives [this and another] are throughout communications
made to me directly by Mr. Hill. And I saw him so frequently and so
familiarly during my 10 years' stay in Jamaica that they may be relied on
as thoroughly accurate reports. « CHARLES C. STARBUCK,

" Ten years missionary in Jamaica in connection
with the American Missionary Association."

(540) From Mr. F. J. Jones, Civil Engineer, Heath Bank, Mossley
Road, Ashton-under-Lyne. « ]y[arch 1884.

" The following story was told me by an old friend [name given], to
whom it happened when an undergraduate of Peterhouse College, Cam-
bridge. I will try and put it in his own words as nearly as possible.

" ' I had arranged to stay up part of the long vacation to grind in
quiet, and to make the best of lost time.

" 'The event occurred on a Tuesday, in 1843, and I well remember

1 It will be observed that the evidence for this remark of the dying man is third-
hand ; and the exact correspondence of part of it with what Mr. Hill heard is the sort of
point which is very likely to creep into a story of this class as it passes from mouth to
mouth.

VOL. II. 2 K 2

500 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

feeling very lonely and wretched, for the weather was miserably wet, and
all friends had gone down the day before. My greatest chum, a man
named Bohun, I had seen off by the London coach, on his way to Dover,
from whence he was to cross the Channel, to visit the friends of the girl
to whom he was engaged. When saying good-bye, I little thought we
should never meet again, at all events in the flesh. The first 24 hours of
my solitude passed well enough, for I had a lot of lost time to make up.
The evenings, however, hung very heavily on my hands.

" ' On the second (Tuesday) evening, I turned in about 10 o'clock,
meaning to get up early to work the next morning. Instead of undress-
ing, I threw myself down on my bed in my clothes, and soon fell asleep.
How long it lasted I don't know, but before very long I woke with a
sudden sense of chilliness,1 and was startled to hear a sort of choking sound
at my back. Turning round quickly, I was surprised to see, by the light
of the reading lamp, my friend Bohun, half sitting up in my arm-chair
beside the bed, and apparently gasping for breath. For a few seconds I
looked at him in bewilderment, and then called him by name. In an
instant the chair was vacant, and jumping off the bed I found the door
locked, and the oak sported, as I left them.

" ' Thinking it only a dream, though even then I must confess I was
considerably startled by the vividness of it all, I undressed and got into
bed, dozing off again in a few minutes. My sleep cannot, however, have
been of long duration, and a second time I woke with the same curious
sensation, and again saw Bohun gasping in the chair beside my bed.2
Moving cautiously to that side of the bed, I made a sudden dash— at
nothing : for a second time he was gone.

" ' Now thoroughly awake, and, I must confess, not liking it all, I
left my room, and calling the porter, we went through the empty place,
only to find everything right and secure. The man seemed to think I had
been taking rather more than perhaps was wise, and, much to my disgust,
hinted it rather plainly ; so in him I found only a Job's comforter. Being
unable to sleep any more that night, I made up my mind to read for the
remaining hours before daylight.

" ' The next day nothing transpired, and I began to feel I had rather
made a fool of myself, and did not at all relish the porter's inquiries after
my health. Wednesday passed, and a lot of reading was accomplished,
and on Thursday I walked out a short distance to meet the London coach,
which brought my weekly papers. After a short chat the driver suddenly
said " Have you heard, sir, of poor Mr. Bohun's sad death 1 As he was
going on board the packet at Dover he slipped on the gangway, falling into
the water, and was never seen again."

" ' The shock to me was so great that for several weeks I was laid up
in my room, and in my delirium I was afterwards told I was always raving
about my poor friend and his mysterious visit to my rooms.'

" F. J. J."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Jones says : —

" My friend about whom you ask has been dead now about nine years.
He first told us the story in the year 1867, and has since often alluded

1 See p. 37, first note.

2 Compare cases 503 and 519, and see p. 237, note.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 501

to it." In conversation I learnt that this friend was Mr. Jones's tutor,
living in the same house, for several years, and was most deeply respected
by him. We have ascertained that he was at Peterhouse in 1843 ; but the
name Bohun does not appear in the Cambridge Calendar of that date, and
is probably a mistake. We have not been able to discover any public
notice of the accident, and the death was probably not registered.

[It ought to be observed that the percipient was probably falling ill
at the time of his vision ; and that in his subsequent delirium the order
of events may have become confused. Still, it seems unlikely that his
recollection of the anxiety that succeeded the vision and preceded the
arrival of the news is a piece of pure imagination.]

(541) From Mr. George M. Barker, Brynderw, Dolgelly.

"July, 1884.

" Travelling by train from London to Brighton in company with my
tutor, we sat opposite an elderly lady, who seemed to doze. About half-
way, she awoke with a cry, and was much agitated. My tutor soothed her,
and asked her what was the matter. She stated that she had seen her son
(who was in the navy) drowning before her eyes, and that it was so
horribly real, even to the minutest detail of dress, &c., that she could not
believe that she was travelling in a railway carriage. She vowed that she
had not been to sleep. My tutor, with her permission, called upon her
next day, and an acquaintance struck up, which lasted for some time.
About a fortnight after the scene in the carriage, news duly arrived of the
death of the son at sea, while rowing from the ship to the shore. This
event occurred in the year 1870 or 1871.

" GEORGE M. BARKER."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Barker says : —

" I am unable to furnish you with the address of my old tutor. His
name was Alfred Downes, 64, Upper Brunswick Place, Brighton, but I
have heard recently that he has left Brighton. The name of the old lady
I heard mentioned by my tutor years ago, but I have no recollection of
what it was, or where, exactly, she lived. The bald facts are, therefore,
all that I can give you. To me, at the time, this event was of consider-
able interest. I may 'mention that I am a thorough disbeliever in every-
thing unnatural and ghostly.

" I have no doubt that the time was exactly the same, and for this
reason : my tutor and I were travelling by a very fast train between
London and Brighton, the total journey only occupying Ihr. lOmin. ; we
were' just passing, or had just passed (I really forget which) Redhill
Station, which is about half way, so that we could easily fix the time. My
tutor, seeing the condition of the poor lady, asked, and was allowed, to
call upon her to inquire after her state, and it was during one of these calls
that the news was confirmed. The time of the upset of the boat was, allow-
ing for the change between the two distances, as nearly corresponding aa
possible."

We cannot trace Mr. Downes ; the postmaster at Brighton has no
later address than that given.

(542) From Mr. S. Alfred Steinthal, The Limes, Nelson Street,
Manchester.

502 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" March 21st, 1884.

" A lady of my acquaintance, Mrs. Ashton, now deceased, the wife of
Mr. Alderman Ashton, of this city, had a son who was the Unitarian
minister at Glossop, in Derbyshire. One night she distinctly saw her son
in his night-dress in her room (she lived then at Cheetham Hill, Man-
chester), and woke her husband, telling him what had occurred. Neither
she nor her husband knew of anything being wrong with their son, but
next morning they were informed that he had been taken suddenly ill,
and had died at the time when Mrs. Ashton saw the appearance she
described. Neither Mr. Ashton nor Mrs. Ashton were Spiritualists.

"S. ALFRED STEINTHAL."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Steinthal adds : — « April 1st 1884.

" Both Mr. and Mrs. Ashton are now deceased. I heard the story, a
short time after the death, from Mrs. Ashton. It was told me in the
presence of her husband, who confirmed the part of the story that she had
awakened him, and had told him of the appearance she had seen. Mr.
Ashton died about seven years ago, but I cannot give you the exact date.
I am sorry I cannot be more definite."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the Rev. Frederick Ashton
died at Glossop on April 15, 1878.

(543) From the late Mr. Myddleton, Leasingham Hall, Sleaford.

"September 1st, 1884.

" Mrs. Onslow was suddenly awakened one night by her son, who was
in the Royal Marines, and afloat on board a man-of-war. She awoke
suddenly and saw her son standing at the foot of the bed. She exclaimed

to her husband, ' Oh ! Onslow, here is ' (the son's name) ' come

back.' Onslow awoke, but the son (or vision) had disappeared. They
noted the exact hour, &c., and when time allowed them to hear from him
(his ship was off" Madeira or St. Helena) a letter arrived saying he was
dead, and had died at the very time he had appeared to his mother.

" This is to certify that the above is a perfectly correct account, as I
have heard Mrs. Onslow often relate; but alas! both she and her husband
have long been dead, and I cannot ask for a written confirmation.

" RD. WHAETON MYDDLETON."

(544) From Mrs. Bryant, Ladymeade, Tyndall's Park, Bristol. The
evidence is of the sort which may be regarded as on a par with first-hand
(Vol. I., p. 148) ; but it cannot be regarded as certain that the figure seen
represented the supposed agent. .. J881

" One morning one of the upper servants came to my father, Captain
Beadon, R.N., and in my presence said that she felt sure he would soon
hear of a death in the family, for in the night she awoke to find an old
lady standing by her bedside, and gazing steadfastly at her. She was
dressed in her shroud, and Stapleton (the maid) especially noticed the fine
old lace on her cap. My father laughed at her, and jokingly asked a
description of her features, which Stapleton gave. I said, ' That is so like
Aunt F.' (Stapleton had never seen Mrs. F.) The maid said at first she
was frightened, and covered her head with the bedclothes ; but she was a
religious woman, and prayed for courage to ask the spirit what it wanted.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 503

On looking again, she found the old lady still there. Stapleton spoke to
her, and gradually and slowly the figure faded away. The next day's post
brought news of the death of my father's aunt, Mrs. F.

In May, 1884, Mrs. Bryant writes :— " GEORGINA BRYANT."

" I have sent my father your letter, and asked him to write out the
story, and see if I have remembered it correctly. I have not compared
notes with him in any way. I don't think it is worth much in point of
evidence — however, what there is is to be relied on.

" In answer to your questions : —

"(1) The date would be nearly 40 years ago.

" (2) I do not at all know if the servant is living.

" (3) I do not know if she had ever seen anything of the kind before.

" (4) She said : ' A noble-looking old lady with her night-dress on and
beautiful lace on her cap.' "

"We find from the Register of Deaths that Mrs. Franklin died on
March 8, 1846.

On May 26th, 1884, Captain Beadon wrote to Mrs. Bryant as
follows :— « Creechbarrow, Taunton.

" DEAR GEORGINA, — When we lived at No. 8, Pavilion Place, Battersea
Fields, Sarah Stapleton, who lived with us as housemaid, informed your
mother and me that an old lady was sitting on her box in her bedroom
when she was getting out of bed in the morning, about 7 a.m.

" The apparition remained some time, and did not disappear until she
addressed it in the name of the ' Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.' She said
she did not know any person like the apparition, but, from her exact
description I said it was my aunt, Mrs. F., whom I then supposed to be
living at No. 5, Hammett Street, Taunton.

" The next post brought me a letter from my cousin, Robert Beadon,
stating that Mrs. F. had died about the time of Stapleton's vision. I do
not remember the exact date of Mrs. F.'s death. Stapleton was a very
respectable, steady young woman — a Wesleyan. Your mother often said
after, she was the best servant she ever had ; she married a young artificer,
then employed at Woolwich Dockyard, in 1845 or 1846. I have never
heard of, or from, her since.

" I lived some two years with my aunt. — I am, your affectionate
father, " GEORGE BEADON."

[If the death was on the night preceding the apparition, as Captain
Beadon stated in conversation that he believed it was, the news probably
arrived not by the " next post," but (as Mrs. Bryant says) by "next day's
post" ; but Captain Beadon cannot be absolutely certain that it did not
occur before night on the preceding day.]

As to the next case, see the remark which prefaces case 527 above.
The standing " at the foot of the bed " — it will have been observed— •>•
is a point which occurs in a large number of these borderland cases.

(545) From Mrs. Harper, Gotham, Bristol.

"December, 1883.
" I was at school at Miss Smith's, Portland Street, Kingstown, with the

504 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

daughters of the Hon. James P., of Jamaica. He was expected home,
and a house in Gotham Park, just opposite my present residence, was being
prepared for him. One night, Hannah P. woke screaming, saying her
father was dead. Miss Smith asked her why she said so, and she stated
that her father had come and stood at the foot of her bed, and then went
and looked at her sister Isabel in another bed. The father died at that
time, and it seems he had a presentiment that he should not live to return,
and had ordered a quantity of rum to be put on board to preserve his body
in if he should die on the way."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Harper adds : —

" I was at school with Hannah P., but not at the time the
occurrence took place to which you allude, so of course was not in the
room. I heard of it afterwards from a young lady that was in the room,
and saw her distress ; she was a proud reserved girl, about 17, and very
unlikely to make a display of feeling unless greatly moved. The younger
girl sleeping in the same room did not see her father, although Hannah
said that he went from her to look at Isabella. I cannot say how long it
was after she went that I heard of it ; it might have been a year. We were
not allowed to speak of it to Hannah. " S. J. HARPER."

We find from the Gentleman's Magazine^ that the death occurred on
Sept. 4, 1825, after a 4 days' illness.

(546) From Mr. E. Keep, who first wrote from abroad, and later from
25, Phillimore Gardens, W. We owe the case in the first instance to the
Oxford Phasmatological Society. « jggO

" Some years ago, Mr. Charles F. Smith, a gentleman living in
Melbourne, became very unwell, and was recommended to go on a sea
voyage. A captain of a merchant vessel going to Java offered him a
berth upon the ship on very moderate terms ; but Mr. Smith's finances
being at a very low ebb, a few of his friends clubbed together and
presented him with £100, and Mr. Smith started on his voyage.

" One of the friends subscribing to the fund was a Mr. Bowman, a very
old friend of Mr. Smith, and some time after Mr. Smith's departure, Mr.
Bowman met me in the street, and said, ' Oh, Mr. Keep, I saw Charley
Smith either last night or the night before ; he appeared at the foot of my
bed dressed in a long black robe ; and bursting into tears vanished.' I
said, ' Are you joking ? One reads of these things in the Night Side of
Nature, and such rubbish, but one doesn't expect to hear of them in
actual life.' ' Oh,' said Mr. Bowman, ' these things are often occurring to
me — you will find Mr. Smith died last night.' I stepped into my office,
and made a note of the conversation and date, and said that Mr. Bowman
was not certain if his dream were last night or the night before.

" In about a month the steamship ' Hero ' arrived at Sydney from Java,
and reported that a passenger, Mr. Charles F. Smith, of Melbourne, had
died at sea on one of the dates specified by Mr. Bowman.

" EDWARD KEEP."

At our request Mr. Keep wrote to Melbourne, to get confirmation of
this narrative; but he found that the diary in which he noted the incident
had been burnt, and his friends knew nothing of Mr. Bowman. He adds
that he thinks the occurrence was in 1869.

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 505

We have received the following letter from Messrs. Gibbs, Bright and
Co., of Melbourne :— « April 28th, 1886.

" In reply to your letter of 20th Feb., we have interviewed Capt.
Logan, who was commander of the s.s. ' Hero ' at the time of the death
of Mr. C. P. Smith ; and he advises us that, as well as he can remember,
Mr. Smith died on the day after leaving Batavia, in Dec., 1886,"-
apparently a slip for 1868, in which year, as we have ascertained
by a search in Sydney papers, the " Hero " was trading from
that place.

(547) From Mademoiselle Glinka, 1, Rue Lincoln, Champs Elyse'es,
Paris. "1884.

" My brother had the habit, when he went to Wiesbaden, to visit an
old servant maid, who had been for 15 years in our family, when we were
children, and who now lives on a pension. She is very much attached to
our family. Lately she had met with an accident, having fallen from a
staircase, and was laid up in her bed for several weeks, with compresses
on her face. She knew of my brother's last illness, but was not aware of
its gravity.

" One day, when lying in her bed in a half doze, she saw my brother
enter her room, clad in his grey coat as usually. Quite confused that
he should see her in that state, she exclaimed, ' Why, Excellency, I am
ashamed that you have come into my room to find me here in my bed.'
He answered, ' Do not mind it, Bienchen ' (the name we called her by),
' have you not been sitting at my bedside hundreds of times when I was a
boy ? ' She begged him to be seated.1 Then he looked at her with a long,
fixed gaze, and disappeared at the door. Frightened and amazed, she
rang for her landlady, and asked her why she had let Mr. G. enter
without announcing him. The woman protested that nobody could have
entered without her knowledge, as she had been on the ground floor, and
that she had not seen his Excellency or anybody else. A few days later
she heard of his death. But the day and hour she had seen him, and
talked with him, my brother had had his arm amputated, being
chloroformed. " J. G."

In answer to inquiries, Mademoiselle Glinka adds on March 7th,
1886:—

" Jacobina Riekes told me of this experience within a week after its
occurrence. It had greatly astonished her, as she had never had any
hallucination in her life. She was certainly awake, as she was in the act
of altering the arrangement of some compresses on her face. She told the
landlady of her experience immediately after it occurred ; but I did not
myself speak to the landlady on the subject. My brother died two days
after the operation. The event occurred at Easter, 1884. My brother
was in Frankfort."

This case is the only one in our collection where the supposed
agent was under the influence of an anaesthetic; but it may be
compared to cases where the condition has been fainting or coma
(see Vol. I., p. 563, note).

1 See p. 460, second note.

506 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

The next case resembles No. 505, above, in representing a complete
scene which seems to have been conveyed to the percipient's mind
some little time after its occurrence, but at a time when the agent's
thoughts (certainly in this case, and presumably in the other) were
directed to the percipient, and also occupied with a mental renewal of
the scene itself. In the present case, however, the interval between
the enactment of the scene and the percipient's experience was
probably little, if at all, more than 12 hours; and it would be
quite possible to regard the case as one of deferred development
(Vol. I., pp. 139, 511).

(548) Slightly abridged from the account of Miss Millicent A. Page,
sent to us by her brother, the Rev. A. Shaw Page, Vicar of Selsley, Stone-
house, Gloucestershire

" I was staying with my mother's cousin, Mrs. Elizabeth Broughton,
wife of Mr. Edward Broughton, Edinburgh, and daughter of the late
Colonel Blanckley, in the year 1844, and she told me the following
strange story : —

" She awoke one night and aroused her husband, telling him that
something dreadful had happened in France. He begged her to go to
sleep again and not to trouble him. She. assured him that she was not
asleep when she saw what she insisted on then telling him — what she saw
in fact. First a carriage-accident, which she did not actually see, but
what she saw was the result, a broken carriage, a crowd collected, a figure
gently raised and carried into the nearest house, and then a figure lying
on a bed, which she then recognised as the Duke of Orleans. Gradually
friends collecting round the bed, among them several members of the
French Royal family — the Queen, then the King — all silently, tearfully
watching the evidently dying Duke. One man (she could see his back, but
did not know who he was) was a doctor. He stood bending over the
Duke, feeling his pulse, his watch in his other hand. And then all passed
away : she saw no more. As soon as it was daylight, she wrote down in
her journal all she had seen. From that journal she read this to me. It
was before the days of electric telegraph, and two or more days passed
before the Times announced ' The Death of the Duke of Orleans.'
[Visiting Paris a short time afterwards, she saw and recognised the place
of the accident, and received the explanation of her impression. The
doctor who attended the dying Duke was an old friend of hers ; and as he
watched by the bed, his mind had been constantly occupied with her and
her family. The reason of this was an extraordinary likeness — a likeness
which had often led to amusing incidents- — between several members of the
Broughton family and members of the French Royal family who were
present in the room.] ' I spoke of you and yours when I got home,' said
the doctor, ' and thought of you many times that evening. The likeness
between yourselves and the Royal family was, perhaps, never so strong as
that day when they stood there in their sorrow, all so natural ; father,
mother, brothers, sisters, watching the dying son and brother. Here was
the link between us, you see.' "

iv.] "BORDERLAND" CASES. 507

The detailed account of the death of the Duke of Orleans was in the
Times of July 15, 1842. The carriage accident took place at 12.30 p.m.,
on July 13. The Duke was carried into the nearest house, and attended
by Dr. Bawnes and Dr. Pasquier. The King, Queen, and Due d'Aumale
arrived at the spot almost immediately ; and the account in Galignani's
Messenger for July 14 shows that other members of the Royal family and
officials of distinction were present. The death occurred shortly after
3 p.m.

[This case is so exceptional in character as to excite some mistrust. It
seems very possible that the scene has assumed a more dramatic complete-
ness in the narrator's memory than the original description would warrant;
but if, as alleged, the record was immediately made in the percipient's
diary, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the correspondence was of
a very striking kind.]

(549) In Recollections, Political, <&c., of the last Half Century by the
Rev. J. Richardson, LL.B. (1856), Yol. I., pp. 65-8, there is a circum-
stantial account of the appearance of Mr. John Palmer (an actor, who
died suddenly on the stage at Liverpool, on the 2nd August, 1798), on the
night of his death to a person in London, named Tucker. Tucker was a
hall-porter, and habitually slept on a couch in the hall which Mr. Palmer
passed at night, when he let himself in with a latch-key. The account was
given by Tucker himself to Mr. Richardson, who, though a gossiping writer,
does not seem to be an inaccurate one.

" The fact of his absence from London was known to Tucker, but he
was not aware about his arrangement for his return. On the night just
mentioned, Tucker had retired at an earlier hour than usual ; but the
company in the drawing-room were numerous, and the sound of their
merriment prevented him from falling asleep ; he was in a state of morbid
drowsiness, produced by weariness, but continually interrupted by noise.
As he described the scene, he was sitting half upright in his bed, when he
saw the figure of a man coming from a passage which led from the door of
the house to the hall. The figure paused in its transit for a moment at the
foot of the couch, and looked him full in the face ; there was nothing
spectral or like the inhabitant of the world of spirits in the countenance
or the outline of the figure, which passed on, and apparently went up the
staircase. Tucker felt no alarm whatever ; he recognised in the figure the
features, gait, dress, and general appearance of John Palmer, who he
supposed had returned from Liverpool, and having the entree of the house,
had, as usual, availed himself of his latch-key. . . . Next morning,
in the course of some casual conversation, he informed Mrs. Vernon that
he had seen Mr. Palmer pass through the hall, and expressed a hope that
his trip to Liverpool had agreed with his health. The lady stared at him
incredulously, said he must have been dreaming, or drinking, or out of his
senses, as no Mr. Palmer had joined the festivities in the drawing-room.
His delusion, if delusion it were, was made a source of mirth to the peopfe
who called in the course of the day. He however persisted in his assertion
of having seen Mr. Palmer, and on the arrival of the post from Liverpool
on the day after he had first made it, laughter was turned into mourning,
and most of the guests were inclined to think there was more in it than
they were willing to confess."

508 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

The following case is perhaps worth quoting, as parallel, in the form
of the impression, to Nos. 175, 176, and 190; but it cannot receive
an evidential number, being third-hand, and handed down by persons
not likely to feel any special sense of responsibility with respect to it.

From Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Wife,
by Thomas Moore (1830), Yol. L, p. 193.

" Lord Byron used sometimes to mention a strange story, which the
commander of the packet, Captain Kidd, related to him on the passage [to
Lisbon, in 1809]. This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his
berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his limbs,
and there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he thought,
distinctly, the figure of his brother, who was at the time in the Naval
Service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform and stretched across the
bed. Concluding it to be an illusion of the senses, he shut his eyes and
made an effort to sleep. But still the pressure continued, and still as often
as he ventured to take another look he saw the figure lying across him in
the same position. To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to
touch this form, he found the uniform in which it appeared to be dressed
dripping wet. On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he
called in alarm, the apparition vanished ; but in a few months afterwards
he received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had
been drowned in the Indian Seas."

[The alleged touching of the clothes and feeling them to be wet is just
one of those details which are met with in traditional narratives of the
kind, and for which we have no first-hand evidence.]

I append a translation of a narrative which occurs in a Russian
work, " Prostaia Rietch o Moudrionnykh Viestchakh," or Simple Dis-
course on Difficult Subjects. (Moscow, 1875), by the late Professor
Pogodine, of Moscow, a well-known historian. It is given as from
certain " memoirs " of Kelsieff, a Russian man of letters ; but as the
exact title of the original work is not mentioned, and the account is
professedly abridged, I do not number it as evidence.

" Many years ago I was a pupil of the School of Commerce (St.
Petersburg), and lived near it. My father with my mother and other
children lived at Vasilievney Ostrov. He was a man of business, and
very much occupied, and his visits to me were very rare. One evening I
was lying on my bed, reading a book. Suddenly my door opened, and I
saw my father, pale and triste, enter my chamber, and approach my bed
saying to me, ' God bless you, my son ! Don't forget this ! ' And by the
same way he went out. I was not in the least surprised, for I was sure
that it was really my father who came to me. In a short time I locked
the door and went to bed. Soon I heard a knock at my door. I opened it
and saw my father's coachman ; he told me that my father had expired
about an hour before. It was at the time when I saw him visit me."

CHAPTER V.

VISUAL CASES.

§ 1. I WILL again begin with evidence which is first-hand or on a par
with first-hand. The following is a group of death-cases.

(550) From Mr. Joseph A. Chamberlain, High Garrett, Braintree,
Essex.

" December, 1884.

" About 12 or 14 years ago, a little scholar in my school, named James
Harrington, was very ill with diphtheria. I had been to a village about three
miles off, to give a lesson on the pianoforte, and was returning on a dark
night, about 7 o'clock. I was walking in a narrow footpath between two
hedges, and on coming to a stile, I saw a luminous figure float over the
stile,1 meeting me, and gradually disappear at my left hand. I started, and
said to myself, 'That's Jimmie,' then stamped my foot on the ground and
said, ' How foolish I am to-night.' I reached home about 7.30 to attend
to my evening school, and judge of my surprise, on entering the school, the
caretaker met me at the door, saying, 'Jimmie is dead.' 'When?' I said.
He answered, ' About half-an-hour ago.' "

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death occurred rather
longer ago than Mr. Chamberlain imagined — on Oct. 28, 1867.

In answer to questions, Mr. Chamberlain says : —

"(1) The vision in a general way resembled James, especially as to
size. The features were not clearly defined, but more like a magic-lantern
view not properly focussed.

" (2) I knew that he was ill, but not that he was likely to die.

" (3) I was attached to him, but I cannot say I was particularly
anxious about him. As far as I remember, I went to the house every
evening, as his father and mother kept the coffee-room of which I had the
superintendence ; so my mind was occupied with his condition ; but he was
not in my thoughts before I saw the luminous figure.

" (4) I did mention it to our minister, the Rev. A. Macdougall, but I
cannot say whether it [i.e., the mention] was at the time or near the tim£
— certainly not on the same evening. The fact is, I was rather afraid of
being laughed at.

" I only wish I had been more careful in recording the facts. I shall

1 As regards the movement, compare cases 203, 204, 512 ; as regards the luminosity,
see Vol. i., pp. 550-1.

510 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

never forget the shock I received on entering my evening school half-an-
hour afterwards, and learning from the caretaker that James had died
about half-an-hour before."

Mr. Chamberlain mentions that he has had one other visual hallucina-
tion in his life ; but this was much less distinct, and occurred at a time
when he was "unstrung by constant nursing and watching."

[Here the coincidence seems to have been very exact ; but we cannot
with certainty exclude the supposition that the hallucination was due to
the observer's anxiety as to his pupil's condition.]

(551) From the Rev. C. C. Wambey, now of Paragon, Wilton Road,
Salisbury, the narrator of case 1 29.

"April, 1834.

" My father, who was an Indian officer, retired from the service at an
early age, owing to partial loss of sight, which eventuated in total
blindness. He was somewhat eccentric. Among other things, he was
in the habit of frequently sitting up all night, retiring to bed when the
servants came down in the morning.

" We, that is my father, mother, and their six children, were living at
Crossway Green, in the parish of H., 12 miles from the city of W. One
morning, — -how well I remember it ! I was but a young child then, — a
neighbouring farmer called at our house, and requested to see Mrs. W.
immediately. He was shown into the drawing-room and, when my
mother joined him, he mysteriously closed the door, and in an excited
manner asked if it were all well with the ' Captain.' My mother replied
that he was quite well when her eldest son, who had been reading the
newspaper to him in his room, left him about half-an-hour ago. The
farmer shook his head incredulously, and took his departure. Shortly
after this, one of the servants having been guilty of misconduct, my
mother, taking me with her, went to my father's room to acquaint him
with the matter. As soon as she had opened the door, she started back

in horror, saying to me, ' My , here is your father.' Stretched on the

floor, his head against the bedstead, there he lay, DEAD !

" He was evidently in the act of preparing to dress (for a stocking
was firmly grasped in his hand), when he was seized with a fit of
apoplexy, death apparently having been instantaneous.

" After the funeral, the farmer disclosed to my mother this start-
ling event, which from motives of delicacy, he forbore to mention to her
sooner : —

" On the morning of his visit, he and his carter were with a waggon
and team of horses crossing the common. Suddenly my father, his hand
pointing to our house, appeared in front of the horses (which commenced
snorting and plunging furiously), and as suddenly disappeared. When
the horses had been calmed, the farmer, leaving them in charge of the
carter, hastened to our house, and, as already related, requested to see my
mother instantly.

" CORNELIUS C. WAMBEY."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Wambey says : —

" My father's death occurred when I was in my seventh year. It was
the subject of conversation between my mother and myself from time to

v.] VISUAL CASES. 511

time till her death in 1866, so that the apparition was no mere dream of
childhood.

" I saw the farmer come into the house, and am under the impression
that I was present at the interview between my mother and him, but
am uncertain on this point. However, my mother forthwith mentioned
to the elder children the purport of the farmer's visit ; but at the time she
did not attach importance to it, as my father was in his usual health
when my eldest brother left him, about half-an-hour previously.

" All my brothers and sisters are dead, except one sister whom I have
not seen, and from whom I have not heard, for a long time."

[Though the percipient here did not actually describe his experience
before he heard of the death, Mr. Wambey's remembrance of his strange
visit assimilates the case to those reckoned as on a par with first-hand.
(Vol. I., p. 148). In conversation he mentioned his very strong impression
that he was himself in the room during this visit.]

(552) From Mrs. Rooke, Rawdon College, near Leeds.

On September 28, 1884, Mrs. Rooke wrote that, "About October,
1882, at 9 p.m.," she had had "a visual impression of an intimate friend
who was dead, though at the time the fact was unknown to me."

In answer to inquiries, she adds : —

" Our dear friend had only died within a very short time of my seeing
him. He was in Australia, and we heard of his death a few days over
six weeks after I saw him. He went there for his health, but the last
news we had of him was so good that we were not at all -anxious . I was
sorry afterwards that I had not kept a note of the exact day, but I had
always so scoffed at ghost tales and such like things, that I was most un-
willing to believe I had seen him. The gas was full on at the time ; there
was no light about the figure ; he was as natural as in life, but as I came
near to him vanished. I was going down a corridor, and the vision was
certainly ' external and palpable.' I should think I saw him for half a
minute quite, and expected him to come forward and speak. He was very
much attached to us, as we were to him. a AMELIA. -^ ROOKE "

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Rooke adds :—

" I am sorry to say that I did not mention the subject of the apparition
to any one at the time I saw it ; indeed, not till many months 2 after our
friend's death. There is nothing at all inconsistent with the supposition
that the time of the ' vision ' corresponded with the time of death. I
alw'ays thought it probably did so. The dress was a suit and cap I knew
well,1 but he died in bed. I have never had a hallucination."

[Here the coincidence is of course doubtful. It would remain a
remarkable one, even if the interval exceeded the 1 2 hours' limit laid down
for the cases in this book.]

(553 and 554) From Mrs. Forsyth Hunter, 2, Victoria Crescent, St.
Helier's, Jersey, who sent us the accounts in 1882.

1 See Vol. i., p. 540.

2 This seems to be a mistake : see the "Additions and Corrections " at the beginning
of the volume.

512 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Mrs. Hunter had had a friend from whom she had parted in coldness,
and whom she had not since seen or corresponded with. " Poor Z." (the
real name was privately given) " was very far from my thoughts, when
one night, in the winter of 1862 or spring of 1863, I had just got into
bed. The fire burned brightly, and there was my usual night light. I
was placing my head on the pillows, when I beheld, close to the side of
the bed, and on a level with it, Z.'s head, and the same wistful look on
his face which it had worn when we had parted years before. Starting
up, I cried out, " What do you want ? " I did not fear ; anger was
my feeling. Slowly it retreated, and just as it disappeared in the shadow
of the wall, a bright spark of light shone for a few seconds, and slowly
expired.1

" A few days after, my sister wrote, ' You will have heard of poor Z.'s
death on his way to the South of France.' I had heard nothing about
him for years. Special reasons prevented my inquiring particularly into
the precise moment of his death. Strange to say my bedfellow was his
great pet among my children ; she, however, slept through this strange
interview."

We find from the Medical Register and the Scotsman that " Z." died
at Hyeres, on Nov. 17, 1862.

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Hunter adds : —

" At Melrose, where I was a stranger, I could not have mentioned such
a thing ; but my sister paid me a visit about Easter, and I told her. No
doubt she will confirm ; but I would rather not recall the event."

" A daughter of mine in India was expecting her confinement to happen
at the end of November, 1872. I was not anxious about her ; indeed
other important family events were occupying all my thoughts. On the
23rd of October, at noon, I was alone. All at once, a cold shivering feel-
ing came over me, and I turned suddenly, and beheld a slight bending
figure, standing near the closed door, covered over with a loose glistening
robe or sheet of an ash grey colour. It looked such a sad little drooping
figure, and the attitude and outline were strangely familiar to me ; yet I
never thought of her in connection with it. On the 1 9th November we
had the startling news that she had died (eight days after giving birth to
a son) on the 23rd of October, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. It was not
for some days after that I thought of what I had seen in London at that
hour on that day ; I have never since for a moment doubted that it was
she. I was in London, and she in India ; our noon was the afternoon there,
and her appearance must have been at the moment of dissolution."

We have confirmed the date of death in Allen's Indian Mail.

[In both cases the degree of exactitude in the coincidence must be
regarded as uncertain, in the absence of proof that the date of the vision
was accurately noted at the time. Mrs. Hunter has had at least one, and
possibly a second, purely subjective hallucination of vision (Vol. I., p. 535,
and p. 211, above).]

1 As regards the truncated appearance — a head only — see p. 33, note, and compare case
572 below. As regards the light, see Vol. i., pp. 550-1, and p. 479 above ; and as regards
the gradual disappearance, see p. 97, second note.

v.] VISUAL CASES. 513

(555) From Mrs. Perryn, 27, Adrian Square, Westgate-on-Sea.

"April 1st, 1885.

"In 1870 my mother was dangerously ill, but just before her death
seemed to be rallying. I was aware of the improvement. One evening,
on retiring to bed, about 10 o'clock, I was astonished to see the figure of
my mother just beside my bedroom door. I immediately told my husband
about it, and he made a note of the date (September 22nd). My mother
died in Canada early on the morning of the 22nd of September. The figure
looked as though enveloped in a faint smoke.1 It was not recognisable
in feature ; but I immediately identified it as the appearance of my
mother. The attire was the same in which I had last seen her several
years before.2 « F A PERRYN."

In answer to the question whether she had ever had any other hallu-
cination of the senses, Mrs. Perryn replies, " This experience is quite unique
in my life." She adds, " I have looked for the note but cannot find it."

Mr. Perryn writes : —

" At this length of time I cannot feel justified in corroborating the
above circumstance. I cannot find any note of the event, though I think
one was made. .. R H. PERRYN."

(556) From Mrs. Richards, Spring Wood, Godalming.

"July 3rd, 1883.

" About the year 1834 or 1835, I was in a boarding school at Cadogan
Place, Chelsea, kept by ladies named Horn, where, amongst other pupils,
there were two sisters with whom I was very intimate. These girls came
from a distance, their home being in the North of England, I believe;
and travelling then being very different to what it is in these days of rail-
ways, they did not always go home for their holidays, and consequently
were not impressed by the critical state of their mother's health.

" We slept in a large dormitory in which were several beds, the two
sisters occupying a double bed. On a certain night, most of the girls
were asleep, and myself in the next bed to one of the sisters, who was
already in bed, and, like myself, anxious to be quiet and allowed to go to
sleep ; but we were hindered by the frolicksomeness of the younger sister,
who sat outside the bed and facing the door at the end of the room, which,
I remember, was not quite dark, either owing to moonlight or the time of
year. As the elder sister was urging her to be quiet and to get into bed,
the younger one suddenly exclaimed, and putting her hands over her face,
seemed greatly agitated. As there seemed no cause for this sudden excite-
ment, we, thinking it was only another form of her nonsense, and fearing
the noise would bring up the governess, who also slept in the room,
scolded her well, upon which she got into bed. Turning again to look
towards the door, she uttered another cry, directing her sister's attention
to the door ; but she saw nothing,3 and still thought the younger one was
joking. But the latter buried her head under the clothes, and I, being •
very tired, went to sleep and thought no more about this disturbance.

1 Cf. case 210, where the figure was " surrounded by a light sort of phosphorescent
mist ; " and see Vol. i., p. 526, first note.

2 See Vol. i., p. 546.

3 See p. 105, second note.

VOL. II. 2 L

514 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" Next morning no notice was taken of it, and no impression seems to
have been made on my mind or that of the other girls ; probably, as I
now think, owing to our being accustomed to the volatile disposition of
the younger sister. However, about two days afterwards, the sisters were
summoned into the room of the ladies of the school to receive letters.
Shortly after, I was sent for, and found them in floods of tears, having
just heard the news of their mother's death. Being their chief friend, I
was excused from lessons that I might be with them, and try to console
them. As we were approaching our room, the younger sister stopped us
suddenly, and grasping my arm with violence, she said, ' Oh, do you re-
member the other night when I was frightened 1 I believe it was dear
mamma that I saw. Let us go back and ask more about it,' or words to
that effect. We went back to Miss Horn's apartment, and on referring
to the letter, we found that their mother had died, as nearly as we could
calculate, at the same hour that the incident in the dormitory occurred.

"This is what the girl said she saw: A tall, slight figure in white,
resembling her mother, as she now thought, though she did not recognise
Matures, who, with outstretched arms, seemed to beckon to her.

" Talking it over on the same day, she remarked, ' Ah, I think I see
now why dear mamma appeared to me. She had often reproved me for
my giddiness, and as she was dying, she wished to give me one more look
and reproof. 1 will try and be very different. I shall never forget her
warning,' &c. She appeared deeply impressed, but as the sisters and I
were soon parted, and did not correspond, I lost sight of them.

" This is a true account, and I believe clearly remembered by me,
though so many years ago. Neither I nor the sister saw the appearance,
but witnessed the effect on the girl who did see it, both being quite awake."

We find from Boyle's Court Guide that Mrs. and the Misses Horn
lived at 41, Cadogan Place, Chelsea, from 1836-8. Mrs. Richards has
therefore antedated the incident by a year or two.

[The case is remote ; but when the central fact, narrated by an eye-
witness of the scene, is so precisely like that of numbers of more recent
and corroborated cases, the hypothesis that it has been unconsciously
invented does not seem specially probable.]

(557) The narrator of the next case objects to publicity, and takes

no interest in the subject.

"November 6th, 1884.

"When I was about 10 or 12 years old, I was sitting one evening,
towards dusk, at the piano practising, when I saw an old lady, the grand-
mother of one of my schoolfellows, enter the room. I was in the habit of
seeing her frequently, and recognised her perfectly. She was very old,
and to the best of my belief had never entered our house at all, so that I
was greatly surprised to see her. I heard the next day she had died on
the evening I saw her. I never had any other hallucination.

" MARY C."

In conversation, Miss C. explained to Mr. Podmore that she did not
actually see the figure enter the room. She looked up suddenly, and
found it standing by her side. The figure was in ordinary indoor dress,
with, as she particularly noticed, a large white cap, of muslin and lace,
such as the old lady usually wore. The figure vanished suddenly as she

v.] VISUAL CASES. 515

looked at it. The room, though dusk, was not dark, and she was able
distinctly to recognise the features.

She cannot be certain whether she told anyone of what she had seen.
She probably told the friend (the granddaughter of the lady who died)
from whom she heard the news of the death next day. The time of the
death she does not remember.

She knew the old lady well, and was in the habit of running in to
see her nearly every day. But at this distance of time she cannot recol-
lect whether the death was regarded as imminent.

She has lost sight of her friend, and can get no further particulars.
The incident occurred about 1852; but the name of the lady who died
being a very common one, our efforts to obtain the exact date have failed.

The next case seems to illustrate the heightening of the per-
cipient's susceptibility at the approach of death. It is, of course,
very rarely that there is a chance for this to be observed ; as it can
only comparatively rarely happen that death (or some event of critical
interest) happens to A's friend or relative at a distance, at the par-
ticular time that A is dying. But I may refer to cases 372 and 416.

(558) From the Rev. J. A. Macdonald, formerly of Manchester, and
now of Rhyl. The evidence may fairly be regarded as first-hand from
the percipient's daughter.

"September, 1878.

" During the last illness of Mr. William Jackson, of Otley, who for 50
years had been a consistent member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church,
the little son of his daughter sickened and died. Wishing not unneces-
sarily to disquiet the good man, this sad event was withheld from him. He
was full of holy joy, and recognised the presence in his chamber of a
number of his relatives who had departed this life in the triumph of faith.
He pointed them out in succession — this is so-and-so, and there such
another. In the course of this proceeding he suddenly started with sur-
prise, for he discovered his grandson also among the heavenly company.
Then turning to his daughter, he said, ' Well, never mind, he is all right.'

" His daughter, Miss Jane Jackson, certifies this. She says, ' It is
perfectly true ; I was in the room with my lamented father at the time.' "

In answer to an inquiry, Mr. Macdonald writes : —

" As to the case of William Jackson, his daughter did endorse it to me
as rioted in the quotation marks, but I destroyed her letter, never dream-
ing of a Society for Psychical Research, and I do not know now where to
find her. The family evidently knew that the grandson had died, but kept
that knowledge from the dying man. The information I received from the
wife of Mr. Town Councillor Myers, of Hull." Miss Jackson is since
deceased. We learn that Mr. Jackson died on Jan. 12, 1876.

[The central incident in a case of this type seems reasonably explicable
by thought-transference from one of the bystanders (cf. case 379) — though
many would of course be unwilling to regard the vision of the other relatives
as purely subjective. I have referred more than once to the difficulty of
making quite sure that a piece of important news, which is abroad in a
household, has not reached ears for which it was not intended.]

VOL. II. 2 L 2

516 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

(559 and 560) From Mr. Hickman Heather, Postmaster of Retford.
The evidence in the first case is second-hand, but in the second is on a par
with first-hand (Vol. I, p. 148). „ February i8thj i885.

" In my early boyhood I have frequently heard the following story
from both my parents. I may preface the story by saying that, in 1835,
my father, Thomas Heather, was a miller, occupying a windmill in West-
thorpe Fields, in the parish of Southwell, his house being at Westthorpe,
about one mile distant from the mill. My grandfather, John Heather,
occupied a farm under the late Sir Richard Sutton, at Goverton, in the
parish of Bleasby, about 3 miles distant. My father, who had been work-
ing his mill until past midnight, locked up his mill and went home. On
his way the apparition of his mother crossed his path, and was so clearly
seen that he marked the dress, one which had been commonly worn, and
on his arrival at home he at once reported the circumstance to [his wife]
my mother, saying that ' he had never seen his mother more plainly in his
life.' Early next morning, a man rode in with the sad news that my
grandmother had been found dead in her bed.

" A second case occurred under my own notice, although the apparition
was not seen by me. In the year 1854, my father, who then lived at
Goverton, Bleasby, was building a house and a yard for pigs. The build-
ing and the yard were on a slope. My father was standing at the lower
end with his arms resting upon the wall ; the entrance to the house from
the yard was directly opposite, and was open, the door not having been
hung. I was in the farmyard at some little distance, but having a clear
full view of my father and the building, when I was startled by my father
exclaiming, ' Jack, just see what your Uncle Ned is doing in the pigsty.'
I at once went, although I knew it to be impossible that my Uncle Ned
could be there, he being seriously ill at the time. Having searched the
place, my father told me that he had distinctly seen my uncle cross the
doorway, and would scarcely believe that he was not to be found inside.
In about a couple of hours, a messenger brought the tidings that my
uncle had died.

" I beg to add that in the case of my grandmother there was no
previous illness, she having gone to bed in apparently perfect health.

"JOHN HICKMAN HEATHER."

We have procured a copy of an inscription of a tombstone at Bleasby,
which confirms the fact that Mrs. John Heather died in 1835 (May 2).

We find from the Register of Deaths that Mr. Edward Heather died
on Nov. 28, 1853, not 1854.

Mr. Heather's wife writes on May 22, 1886, to confirm these accounts,
which she herself " heard from the lips of both Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Heather."

The narrator of the following cases is the brother of the narrator
of No. 232 ; it is possible therefore to suppose some degree of family
susceptibility (p. 132, note). The first case may have been an illusion,
and I give it no separate evidential number.

(561) From the Rev. H. A. H., The Vicarage .

v.] VISUAL CASES. 517

" December 19th, 1885.

" The following occurrences took place three years ago, and had
reference to parishioners here who were much on my mind, and whom I
was visiting in their last illnesses.

" One was a farmer's wife who was much afraid of giving me trouble.
I had given her the Holy Communion during the afternoon, and when I
left, promised to come again next day. She said she should be very glad
to see me, but did not like to be such a trouble, as it was some distance
and I was going every day. I said it was no trouble, but the reason why
I was here, and I should be sure to come.

" That evening I had a mission service, 2 miles away, in quite another
direction. Mrs. H. was with me. We were walking home together, and
had joked about not meeting anyone on the road. I said, ' You see if you
had been alone, you would actually have met no one to alarm you.' It
was rather dark, but you could see a form 15 or 20 yards away. We
walked on, talking about various things, and then I saw someone coming.
I said ' Here we meet someone at last.' She said, ' I don't see anyone.'
' There,' I said ; ' look, there comes an old woman, and she is twisting her
shawl round her neck.' My wife, however, could see nothing,1 but I
thought to myself she will see her plainly enough directly. However, it
melted away. There was no one. I said, ' It is very odd ; I certainly did
see an old woman. Let us go into C.'s house' (the village carpenter's) ' and
see if there is anyone dead.' We went in, and he said, ' I have just got
orders to make a coffin.' I looked at Mrs. H. and said, ' Indeed, who is it
for 1 ' He said, ' For Mrs. B.,' naming the farmer's wife I had seen that
very afternoon. I said, ' There must be some mistake. I only left her at
4 o'clock, and there were no signs of immediate death.' ' No,' he said, ' it
is so.' I went next day, and found she had died from a sudden stoppage
of the heart, about half-past 8, and that almost the last words were, ' I am
sorry to give Mr. H. the trouble of coming again to-morrow.'

" The other occasion was about two or three months afterwards. A
very respectable young farmer broke a bloodvessel on the brain, and I
visited him some three or four times. The last time he was quite
unconscious, and evidently could not live long. He was very anxious to
see me as much as possible before becoming unconscious, often saying,
' Send for the vicar.' On the morning that he died, I was awoke by what
I thought was Mrs. H. in her white dressing-gown. We were sleeping, for
some reason, in separate rooms that night. I was very sleepy when awoke,
and said, ' Is it time to get up ? I must have another 10 minutes,' and
fell -asleep again. I did not look at the face of the form, being very sleepy
and feeling swre it was Mrs. H. However, by-and-bye, Mrs. H. did come
in, and said, ' Young R. is dead ; the girl who brings the milk brought
word.' I said, 'Is it very long since youjirst woke me?' Then she
assured me it was the first time she had been in the room. He had died
about 5 that very morning, just as I fancied I had been called by Mrs. H.
My regret is, I did not look at the face, but, being tired and sleepy I only
saw the figure up to the waist, and went off to sleep with it standing there,
never imagining it was not my wife. This is my last hallucination. I
have visited scores of deathbeds since, but have had no further visions.

1 See p. 105, second note.

518 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" I may add I am in no way nervous, but a strong, middle-aged man,
in excellent health, and very temperate in eating as well as drinking. I
don't quite know how to account for these things, except that both these
people were much in my mind, and both of them people for whom I had
much respect and sympathy. " H. A. H."

In conversation, Mr. H. mentioned that he has had two experiences of
apparently subjective visual hallucination ; but these both occurred when
he was a boy. He adds in subsequent letters : —

" I may add, as regards the first of the two curious visions, that I was
very constantly walking that road at that hour, as I had a weekly service ;
but that was the only occasion my eyes misled me. When I first saw the
figure, it appeared to be crossing the road, but in our direction, like a person
changing from the footpath to the middle of the road. It was, of course,
somewhat shadowy, as a person is in the dusk. Still, it had the look of an
old woman ; I could distinguish the sex. The road is a country one, but on
nearing the village there are some lamp-posts, but we were some distance
from them. It was a cloudy and rather windy night, and there were, of
course, shadows from clouds and trees cast about ; it was not deep dark,
but more than dusk. I am so accustomed to these walks that it would be
difficult for any natural object to have caused such an illusion. I was quite
sure that an old woman was there, in the middle of the road — so sure that
I did not keep my eye upon her, and as we came up she was gone. Mrs. H.
has ordinary eyesight, much like my own, neither remarkable for great
acuteness of vision nor the reverse.

" I may add, too, regarding the second case, that I was fully awake,
though heavy with sleep, and did not dream Mrs. H. awoke me. I am
personally convinced of this, for I wondered, as I went off to sleep again,
that Mrs. H. did not go, and thought she would tell me in another minute
or two that I really must get up. I fell asleep with the sensation of her
presence after my eyes were closed again."

Mrs. H. writes :— „ December 23rd, 1885.

" As you wish to have some corroboration of two curious statements
of facts made to you by my husband, I write a few lines to tell you my
remembrance of the occasions. We were walking home from a week-night
service, from a hamlet some distance from here, when I remarked I would
not walk here alone for anything. Mr. H. said, ' It is curious we have
never met anyone.' Not long afterwards, as we were nearing the village,
he said, ' Well, here comes someone at last ; who is it ? ' I said, ' I don't
see anyone.' He said, ' Oh you must, by the lamp-post ' [there is a
discrepancy here from Mr. H.'s account] ; ' she is putting a shawl over
her head, and coming to meet us. Do you know her 1 ' I said, ' Certainly
not, for there isn't anyone.' He said, ' Anyhow she is coming quickly
towards us; then you must see.' In another minute we were both sure
it must have been some appearance, and went into the carpenter's close by
to see if we could hear anything, and his first words were, ' Well, sir, I
have orders for a coffin for Mrs. B.' We both said, ' Impossible ! she
seemed nicely this afternoon.' I know she was anxious to spare my
husband any trouble, as it was a long walk, and we naturally connected it
with this.

" As regards the young farmer, he had been much on our minds, as it

v.] VISUAL CASES. 519

was a distressing case in many ways. Word was brought early in the
morning that he was dead ; but owing to one of the children not being
well, and having to be in my room, Mr. H. was in an adjoining one, and
I would not disturb him until later. When I went in I said, ' Well, poor
J. R. is gone.' He said, ' I knew he would be ; but why didn't you tell
me when you came in before ? ' I said, ' I have not been in before.' He
said, ' Yes, when you came in to wake me, and I begged for at all events
10 minutes more.' He then told me what he had said to me — as he
thought, and he was surprised I did not answer. It must be three or four
years ago, but I remember these facts distinctly. " E. H."

[Neither of these cases would be very striking alone, but they are of
interest as occurring to the same percipient. There can hardly be a doubt
that the experience in the second instance was a hallucination, not an
illusion ; and the same account of the first experience is rendered to some
extent probable by the fact that Mrs. H. did not share it, though any
moving object should have been as visible to her as her husband. And if
the experiences were hallucinations, the improbability that Mr. H. should
subjectively evolve the only two hallucinations of his adult life at those par-
ticular moments remains enormous, however much allowance be made for
the fact that he was aware that his two parishioners were in a dying state.]

In the following case the percipient was a young child. It is a
phantasmal case which may be compared to the merely impressional
cases, Nos. 47 and 48, and the dream-case, No. 456. See also cases
345, 352, 607, 634, 652.

(562) From Mrs. Skyring, Admiralty Offices, Spring Gardens, S.W.
The account was procured for us by Mr. A. W. Lafone, M.P., o

Hatton, Bedfont.

"June, 1883.

"In or about the year 1832, my husband, Captain Skyring, R.N.,
left England on a surveying expedition in command of H.M.S. ' Etna ' ;
our little son, Willie, was about 2 years old at the time of his departure.
The child was very fond of carrying about a miniature portrait of his
father, and on the 23rd of December, 1833, the child being about 3 years
old, he was playing in a curtained recess in the nursery when I heard him
call out in an excited tone ' Papa, papa, come to me.' On my questioning
him he declared he had seen his father, and was so agitated that I was
afraid to allude to the subject again. Shortly afterwards I received news
from the Admiralty that Captain Skyring had been murdered by the
natives at Cape Roxo on the day in question. My son, who is now dead,
lived to be a man, but had no recollection of this episode.

"I may add that Captain Skyring, when lieutenant of H.M.S.
' Beagle,' related that his mother appeared to him as he was lying in his
cot, and that he entered the occurrence in his log-book at the time ; and
discovered, on his return to England, that she had died on the date of the*
apparition. "S. L. SKYRING."

[This case is again very remote ; it is, moreover, impossible to be sure
that independent note was taken of the date of the cry. But the incident
of the child's agitation is not likely to have been unconsciously imagined

520 SUPPLEMENT. . [CHAP.

and the coincidence must have been, at any rate, close enough to excite
remark. The last paragraph in the account once more suggests that the
capacity of percipience was hereditary ; but the detail as to the log-book is
not one that can be relied on (Vol. I., p. 161, note).]

(563) Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood took down the following deposition,
in September, 1876, from Jane Barford, the confidential servant (since
deceased) of a friend, Miss Stephen.

"My father died the llth January, 1848. My mother had sent me
away to an aunt, who lived about two miles off, in order to be out of the
way while my father was so ill. On the morning of his death I was
called at 6 o'clock, intending, as usual, to help my cousins in the dairy.
About a quarter before 7, I was going downstairs with my candle in my
hand, when I met my father in his night-shirt coming up. He put out
his hand, as if to take the candlestick, which I dropped in my fright, and
was left alone in the dark. I knew it could not be my living father, and
was convinced that he was dead, and had come to bid me good-bye. I
told my cousins what had happened, and said that I must immediately go
home. They tried to persuade me to stay till after breakfast, saying it
was only my fancy, but I set off at once, and on my way I met my aunt,
who had been sitting up with my father, and was coming back to tell me
of his death, which had taken place just at a quarter before 7.

" JANE BARFORD."

[The cousins cannot now be traced ; and as Miss Stephen has no clue
to Jane Barford's family, the date of the death cannot be independently
verified. The case is one which could have had little force, since the
percipient had no doubt been in anxiety about her father (Vol. I., p. 509),
but for the extreme closeness of the alleged concidence.]

(564) From Mrs. Poulter, wife of a retired Baptist minister at Leeds.

" 1883.

" When I was a young woman, I lived for sometime at Sevenoaks, and
attended a Wesleyan class conducted by an elderly lady to whom I became
warmly attached. After that (in 1835) I went to live at Bourne, in
Lincolnshire, and one day, while sitting in my front room, I was startled
at seeing my dear old friend from Sevenoaks pass the window, and go
towards the front door. I hastened to receive her, but on opening the
front door there was no one to be seen in the whole length of the quiet
street. I afterwards learnt that at that hour my friend died."

Mrs. Poulter's son-in-law, Mr. J. L. Cherry, of Rowley Park, Stafford,
writes to Professor Barrett : — " It is some 20 years since Mrs. Poulter
first told me the story, and since I had the pleasure of seeing you, she has
certified to the accuracy of the draft which I submitted to her."

[The account is very incomplete ; but Mrs. Poulter is old, and must
not be troubled further.]

(565) From Mr. Louis Lyons, 3, Bouverie Square, Folkestone.

" October 8th, 1883.
" In 1854 we resided in Hanau. We kept two servants. One winter's

v.] VISUAL CASES. 521

evening, just before going to bed, Gretchen came pouncing into the
dining-room where we were sitting, in great excitement, declaring that
her father, whom she had left in good health at Gellnhausen, had just
appeared to her with such dejection in his countenance that she must go to
him that moment ; and off she started in the snow, and reached Gelln-
hausen in time to close her parent's breaking eyes. I cannot procure
further evidence."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Lyons says : —

" It made a deep impression on me, and is now quite fresh on my
mind. I certainly was in the room, and there is not a shadow of doubt in
my mind."

(566) From Mrs. Morris, Pentrabach, Trecastle, Breconshire.

" September 17th, 1884.

" Early in 1881, I had just returned from a drive with my aunt, whom
I had seen off by train to what we felt sure was the death-bed of a little
cousin. It must have been about 6 in the evening. I was standing at
my dressing-table taking off my hat, when I heard someone try my door.
I crossed the room and opened the door at once and saw, standing in the
doorway, the figure of little G., looking very, very white, and dressed in
a white night-dress. What struck me most was that his hands were crossed,
and in the fingers of his right hand were two lilies and a leaf. The face
smiled at me ; and, as I stood looking, the figure disappeared.

" The following day I went up to join my aunt, and heard that G. had
died about 4 o'clock the afternoon before, and that she had seen him soon
after her arrival. I immediately asked if he had lilies of the valley in his
hand, and she said, ' Yes.' I then described his figure, as I had seen it,
and she said it was precisely as he looked and was lying at the time ; that
his sister had bought him, at a florist's, the lilies, and sent them up to him ;
that he had been delighted with them, and had held them until he died ;
and that they were now in his hand.

" Of course, my mind was full of him, and wondering whether my aunt
would find him alive, &c. But if that would have made me imagine I saw
him, why should it have caused me to imagine lilies of the valley in depth
of winter (it was the time of the deep snow), and of which I had not
heard 1 « MARY ETHEL MORRIS."

We find from two obituary notices that the child died on Jan. 26, 1881,

aged 7 years.

In reply to inquiries, Mrs. Morris writes, on October 22, 1884 : —

" I will write to my aunt and ask her to confirm my account of my

little cousin's appearance, as I feel sure she will not hesitate to do so.
" I did distinctly see lilies of the valley in the child's hand."
Mrs. Morris's aunt writes, in a portion of a letter enclosed to us on

Nov. 7, 1884 :—

" As regards poor little G., I quite remember your saying that you
saw him outside your door, and I do remember something about your
saying you saw him with the lilies. I have an idea you said so, but it was
such a sad thing altogether that things are misty. « jy[ARY SELWOOD "

Mrs. Morris adds, on Jan. 26, 1886 : —

522 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" As far as I can recollect I did not mention my seeing my cousin at
the time. I was alone in the house with two very nervous servants,
so that I hardly think it likely I should speak to them about anything
' ghostly.' But I told my aunt, describing the child's appearance, before
she had told me any particulars of the death, the flowers, <fcc."

Mrs. Morris has had two other hallucinations representing a figure,
which in both instances was unrecognised ; one of these occurred at the
moment of waking ; the second may have been due to nervousness or
expectancy, as another member of the household had been similarly
affected just before. But Mrs. Morris is certainly not of a nervous
or fanciful temperament.

[It is no doubt possible that the hallucination in this case was purely
subjective, and connected with anxiety on the child's account ; but it is
difficult to believe that the correspondence of the lilies was accidental.
Mrs. Morris is certain that there was no association in her mind between
the child and this particular flower ; and the idea of getting the lilies for
him had been a sudden one.]

(567) From the late Mrs. Amos, Hythe. "October 1884.

" I was living at Faversham at the time when my mother was taken
ill, who lived at Hythe, Kent. I went to see her on a Friday and returned
home on Tuesday. On Thursday I retired to rest at about 10 o'clock,
when, on looking at the foot of the bed, I saw my mother standing dressed
in white ; her features were very distinct. I spoke to my husband and
asked him to look at the foot of the bed, as mother stood looking at me.
He said, ' I don't see her ; can you see her now % ' l My reply was, ' Yes.'
After that she vanished slowly away. My husband said it was very odd,
and at breakfast he asked me if I was afraid to be alone. My reply was,
I would rather be by myself. The next day we had a letter to say my
dear mother was at rest. I can still see her as plain as at that time. The
date was November, 1846. I have never had another vision but this
one- " SARAH AMOS."

We find from the obituaries in two Dover papers that Mrs. Amos'
mother, Mrs. Wiles, died on Nov. 21, 1846.

Our friend, Miss Porter, who knew and questioned Mrs. Amos, says : —

" I am quite persuaded of the truth of her statement. In describing
the apparition to me, she told me that the room was quite dark, but that
there seemed to be a sort of cloud of light behind the figure which enabled
her to see it distinctly.2 She was very particular in telling me that it
remained all the time she was talking to her husband, and that she looked
at it fixedly the whole time. She thinks that it must have remained
several minutes."

[The percipient's previous state of anxiety has again to be noted, as
possibly the cause of the hallucination.]

(568) Quoted " from the Memoirs of V. Th. Engelhardt" in the work
of Professor Pogodine, of Moscow, Simple Discourse on Difficult Subjects,

1 See p. 105, second note.

2 See p. 459, note, and compare case 210.

v.] VISUAL CASES. 523

mentioned on p. 508. We have been unable to procure the original
Memoirs ; and Mr. T. Bruhns, of Simferopol, a Corresponding Member of
the S.P.R., who has translated the passage, has been equally unsuccessful.

" In 1858, I lived in Moscow, and was ordered to go for some time to
Arkhangelsk. On February (5th-17th,) before leaving, I wrote a con-
gratulatory letter to my mother in Petersburg, who was about to celebrate
(on February 8th-20th) the 80th anniversary of her birthday. I congratu-
lated my dear mother, and entreated her to bless me for my long journey.
Without her blessing I feared that my journey would be unhappy. I sent
my letter and departed. Up to laroslavsk the road was tolerably good.
In this town I spent a day. But from laroslavsk to Vologda the road
became so terribly bad that I was obliged to stop at one station, to rest till
the morning. Having taken out my pelisse, I lay dressed on the sofa. I
don't belong to that happy class of men who fall asleep as soon as they lie
down. I took a book and tried to read, but my fatigue was so great that
I could not read. I rose from the sofa and extinguished the candle,
thinking that in darkness I should fall asleep more quickly. Scarcely had I
again reached my bed when I saw, to my great astonishment, my mother
with her sister, who had died in 1846,1 standing a few feet from me.
Vividly impressed by this extraordinary vision, I looked, motionless, at
these dear ones. My mother was standing before me as though alive, and
she blessed me with a sign of the cross. But her sister, though perfectly
recognisable, had, so to speak, a more light, ethereal aspect. I took the
matches and lighted the candle — but the apparitions had already faded
away. This incident took place in the night of 12th-24th, 13th-25th
February, 1 858, between 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. About a week after
my arrival at Arkhangelsk, I was informed by my brother-in-law that my
mother expired in the night of 12th- 13th February."

§ 2. In the next group of cases, first-hand or on a par with first-
hand, the conditioning event or state on the agent's side was some-
thing other than death, though in two of them death was rapidly
approaching.

(569) From Mr. Algernon Joy, 20, Wilton Place, S.W.

" August 16th, 1883.

"About 1862, I was walking in a country lane near Cardiff by myself,
when I was overtaken by two young colliers, who suddenly attacked me.
One of them gave me a violent blow on the eye, which knocked me down, half
stunned. I distinctly remembered afterwards all that I had been thinking
about, both immediately prior to the attack, and for some time after it.
Up to the moment of the attack, and for some time previously,
I was absorbed in a calculation, connected with the Penarth Docks, then
in construction, on which I was employed. My train of thought was
interrupted for a moment by the sound of footsteps behind me. I looked
back, and saw the two young men, but thought no more of them, and im-*
mediately returned to my calculations. On receiving the blow, I began
speculating on their object, what they were going to do next, how I could
best defend myself, or escape from them ; and when they ran away, and I

1 As to the appearance of a second figure, see VoL i., pp. 545-6.

524 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

had picked myself up, I thought of trying to identify them, and of
denouncing them at the police-station, to which I proceeded, after follow-
ing them till I lost sight of them. In short I am positive that for about
half an hour previous to the attack, and for an hour or two after it, there
was no connection whatever, direct or indirect, between my thoughts and
a person at that moment in London, and whom I will call ' A.' Two days
afterwards, I received a letter from ' A,' written on the day after the
assault, asking me what I had been doing and thinking about at half-past
4 p.m., on the day previous to that on which he was writing. He con-
tinued : ' I had just passed your club, and was thinking of you, when I
recognised your footstep behind me. You laid your hand heavily on my
shoulder. I turned, and saw you as distinctly as I ever saw you in my life.
You looked distressed, and, in answer to my greeting and inquiry, " What's
the matter ? " you said, " Go home, old fellow, I've been hurt. You will
get a letter from me in the morning telling you all about it." You then
vanished instantaneously.'

" The assault took place as near half-past 4 as possible, certainly
between 4.15 and 4.45. I wrote an account of it to ' A ' on the following
day, so that our letters crossed, he receiving mine, not the next morning,
as my double had promised, but on the succeeding one, at about the same
time as I received his. ' A ' solemnly assured me that he knew no one in
or near Cardiff, and that my account was the only one that he received of
the incident. From my intimate personal knowledge of him, I am certain
that he is incapable of uttering an untruth. But there are reasons why I
cannot give his name, even in confidence.1

" ALGERNON JOY."

[Mr. Joy having received an account of the phantasm written before
the news of his accident reached the percipient, his evidence is on a par
with first-hand (Vol. I., p. 148).]

(570) From Mrs. McMullin, formerly Miss Hammill (now in India).

" 9, Southwick Place, Hyde Park, W.

" 1883.

" Many years ago an old nurse, Mary Vivian, who was living with us,
thought she saw one of the De Lancys, whom she had lived with, walk
through our nursery. She was so certain she had seen him that she was
quite overcome, and said she was sure some harm had befallen him. Some
time after, she heard that on his way to the Crimea (I think, but am not
quite sure when it was,) this young De Lancy had jumped overboard to
save the life of a soldier who had fallen overboard, and had been nearly
drowned, the very same evening she thought she saw him in our nursery ;
and he told her he had thought of his old nurse when he was in the water."

Mrs. McMullin adds, " I know it was told me at the time."
Lady Bates, of 2, Sussex Place, Hyde Park, writes : —

" March 14th, 1885.

" Twenty-eight years ago an elderly woman, named Vivian, lived as
nurse in the service of Mr. Hammill, police magistrate, at 34, Sussex
Gardens, Hyde Park. She had previously been for many years in the

1 These reasons have been privately communicated.

v.] VISUAL CASES. 525

family of Colonel De Lancy, one of whose sons in May, 1857, was on his
voyage to India with his regiment, the 22nd. One evening, towards the
end of that month, Vivian told Miss Constance Hammill (then about 18)
that when sitting in the nursery, between 6 and 7 p.m., she had seen
Oliver De Lancy enter and pass through the room, and that she felt sure
that some misfortune had happened to him. I heard of the occurrence
the next day, and well remember, even at this distance of time, the words
in which it was related to me : — ' Vivian has seen a ghost in the nursery,
and it has made her so ill that she is not able to do her work and has gone
to bed.' Some weeks after, Mr. Priaulx, young De Lancy's uncle, called
to tell Vivian that a letter had been received from him, in which he said
that he had nearly lost his life in an unsuccessful attempt to rescue a
private soldier of the 22nd, who had fallen overboard between Gibraltar
and Malta, adding : — ' When I was in the water I thought of old Vivian.'
He gave no date, but Mr. Priaulx, at Vivian's request, inquired at the
War Office, and found that the man had been drowned on the 27th of
May — the day on which, according to a note made at the time, she had
seen the apparition.

" Captain De Lancy and Vivian have been long dead ; and Miss
Constance Hammill is married now in India ; but I have written down
the story exactly as I remember to have heard it. "MM BATES "

The following notice is from Hart's Army List for 1865 : —
" Captain Oliver De Lancy received the medal of the Royal Humane
Society for gallant conduct in endeavouring to save the life of Private
Dempsey, of the 22nd Regiment, who fell overboard between Gibraltar and
Malta, on the night of May 27th, 1857."

Miss Ewart, of 3, Morpeth Terrace, Victoria Street, tells us that when
Lady Bates related this incident to her, near the time when it occurred,
she mentioned that Vivian had gone to make inquiries of Mr. Priaulx the
day after her vision, having received special permission from Mrs. Ham-
mill to do so. But Lady Bates, though she says this may probably have
been so, does not now remember it.

Dr. Scott, late headmaster of Westminster School, who heard of the
incident soon after its occurrence, has given us an independent and
substantially concordant account of it.

(571) From Mr. H. Wooderson, 2, Little Queen's Road, Teddington.

"1881.

" Like the rest of my brothers and sisters, I have always had the
capacity of seeing spirits in a clairvoyant way.1 When I was a youth of
14, I ran away from Hampton Court, where my parents lived, and I went
into service as under-gardener with Captain Emmett, Ditton House, the
next estate to Lord St. Leonards', at Long Ditton on the other side of
the river. One night, about 1,857, when it was my turn to look after the
fires in the hot-house, just as I was going down into the stoke-hole, I saw
my mother standing on the top of the stoke-hole in her night-dress, and
Aon.?.

1 Mr. SWooderson explains these " spirits " to be hallucinations representing living
persons, which he has regarded as premonitory of their actual approach. His wife confirms
the fact that his prognostications of this kind have often been fulfilled ; but no accurate
record has been kept.

526 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

her head bound up as in a turban, as if she was ill, which much frightened
me ; and on joining the foreman of the houses, a Scotchman, he said, ' You
look frightened.' I told him I had seen my mother ; he remarked that I
had seen her wraith, and ought to go home, to which I agreed. It was
then about half-past 1 o'clock. We used the Captain's boat that was in
the boathouse to set me over the river, and I ran home. I arrived at
home at 2 o'clock, and found my mother lying in bed just as I had seen
her in my vision. She said, ' I knew I should bring you.' She recovered
from her illness.

" Some time after this, I was employed as guard on the G. E. Railway,
and I and my mate, who worked the down train while I took the up train,
shared the same lodgings at Selby Street, Waterloo Town, Bethnal Green.
We used to cross each other at Bishop's Stortford, where we would
exchange a few words. One night I felt very heavy as if some misfortune
was about to happen to my family. I spoke to my companion when I met
him at Bishop's Stortford, and said I was sure that something was wrong
with my mother. My companion made light of it, and said I should be all
right when I went to work. The impression, however, remained with me,
and when I saw my companion at night he told me there was a telegram
waiting at home for me from Hampton Court. The telegram was to warn
me that if I wished to see my mother alive, I must set off at once. I
started as soon as I could, after showing the railway authorities the
telegram, and taking the first train to Hampton Court, I arrived about
12 o'clock, and found my mother awaking- from half-an-hour's sleep, which
she had had after long wakefulness from fever. When she saw me she said,
' I could not depart till I had seen you, but now it is all right.' She then
lay down and passed away during the day without any trouble. This was
in the summer of 1866. " H. WOODERSON."

We find from a newspaper obituary that Mrs. Wooderson died on
Aug. 20, 1868 (not 1866).

[As Mr. Wooderson recollects the turban as the special feature in his
vision which suggested to him the idea of illness, it is not so easy as it
would otherwise be to suppose that he wrongly read back the turban into
the vision after he had seen it in reality ; and the case may be compared
to those in Chap. XII., $ 8, where some real feature of the agent's aspect
seems to be conveyed. The case, however, besides lacking corroboration,
is of course much weakened, from an evidential point of view, by its
opening sentence.]

(572) From a lady who has a dread of publicity.

"September, 1884.

"In 1857, during church service, I had an impression of something
being close to my face. I opened my eyes, and saw distinctly the face of
a friend.1 It appeared quite solid, and I could recognise all the markings
in the face. Being startled, I closed my eyes, when it was no longer
visible ; on re-opening them it was still present. I cannot now remember
whether the news of my friend's death reached us that evening, or early
the following morning. He died during the day (Sunday) on which I
had the vision ; but I never heard the exact hour. " H. C."

1 Compare case 553, and see p. 33, note.

v.] VISUAL CASES. 527

On being interrogated by our friend, Miss Porter, of 16, Russell
Square, Miss C. added that when she was first aware of something being
near her and opened her eyes, the vision was within an inch or two of
her face, too close for recognition till she drew back a little.1 It seemed
to remain stationary. She cannot say how long it remained, but described
how a feeling of horror carne over her that it would always be there be-
fore her eyes. It was also long enough for her to make up her mind
that her friend was dead, and she was not at all surprised when the
news came. It disappeared suddenly — did not fade, but was there one
moment and gone the next.

On inquiry, Miss C. told the present writer that she knew her friend
to be ill, but was in no apprehension of his death. She preferred not to
give his name, but undertook herself to ascertain from the Times obituary
whether she was right in her recollection that he died on a Sunday. The
result showed that she was not, and that he died on a Wednesday.2 He
had however been very ill, and delirious, for 3 or 4 days previously ; and
as she has never had a hallucination on any other occasion, a remarkable
coincidence remains.

(573) From Mrs. Beaumont, 1, Crescent Road, S. Norwood.

" February 24th, 1885.

" One day in the '40s, when I was living in the Rectory at Marl borough,
my father's house, my mother and sister had gone out, and I was lying
on a sofa in the drawing-room; at about 3 p.m. I was reading a book, when
the light seemed to be slightly darkened, and looking up I saw, leaning in
at the window farthest from me, about three feet from the ground, and
beckoning, a gentleman whom I had only seen once, about a fortnight or
three weeks previously. Supposing that my father wanted me to sign my
name (as a witness to a lease, or something of that kind), I got up, went
out of the window (which led down into the garden), and passed along in
front of the house, and up six steps into my father's study, which was
empty. I then went into the yard and garden, but found nobody ; so I
returned to my sofa and my books. When father came in, two hours
afterwards, I said, ' Why did you send Mr. H. to call me, and then go
away 1 ' My father replied, ' What are you talking about 1 H. is down
in Wales.' Nothing more was said. I did not like to dwell on the subject
to either of my parents, and I did not mention the occurrence to any one
for several years. About a fortnight afterwards, I was told by my mother
that Mr. H. had written, proposing for my hand (some property of his
adj6ined some property of my father's in Wales). I cannot fix exactly how
close the coincidence was ; but my strong impression is that the letter was
received within 24 hours of my experience. Before I was told of the
contents of the letter, I remember that I found the blue envelope of Mr.
H.'s letter (with T. H. on the corner, and with the coat-of-arms on his
seal, and with the postmark Llandilo) on the floor in my father's study^.
When the news was told me, I seemed to receive some explanation of my
vision.

1 See Vol. L, p. 522, note.

2 As regards the liability to exaggerate the closeness of the coincidence, see Vol. i.,
pp. 140-6, and the examples given in vol. i., pp. Ixxv-vii.

528 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" I have never had any hallucination or vision at any other time, except
when I saw the ' little brown lady ' at Kintbury.1 " C. BEAUMONT."

[Here we have the points that the hallucinatory vision of a recognised
figure was unique in the percipient's experience ; and that the supposed
agent's thoughts must have been much occupied with her at the time. But
we have no proof that, on his side, the particular time at which the phan-
tasm was seen stood out in any way from the hours and days that preceded
and followed it ; and the coincidence therefore lacks precision.]

(574) From Mr. J. H. Jevons, 182, Elm Grove, Brighton.

" August, 1884.

" Whilst I was dressing, the other morning, the form of a friend
passed amongst some trees opposite to my house, and so little doubt had I
as to the form being his, as he looked up to my window, that I waved my
hand to him to 'go on' up the road where we frequently walked. I followed
in a minute or two, but only to find that I could not find him, high or low,
up or down that road, or along any of three others. At length I went
along an accustomed road, to a point in the town where we not infrequently
met, or separated, as the case might be. But non est inventus. Subse-
quently I called at his house, and found him very ill indeed, as he still
remains."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Jevons says : —

"September 8th, 1884.

"I think that in cases of this sort one cannot be too careful as to identity,
because I know practically how apt the imagination is to outrun the
judgment. But of this particular instance under notice, the most I can
say is, that if it was one of self-deception or mere subjectiveness, I
was most completely deceived indeed. Certainly I had reason to expect
my friend, as he came past my place nearly every morning at about
1 1 o'clock, looked up at my window, and when I saw him, I waved my hand
in the direction in which I implied I would follow him. As I did so on
the morning to which .1 am referring, I saw him and nodded to him two or
three times, never for an instant doubting that the figure was his. I saw,
through the leaves and branches of the trees, on the walk opposite to my
house, his white hat, silver-rimmed spectacles and dark grey beard, as well
as his peculiar contour and gait. He is 72 years of age, tall, slow of move-
ment, and not very quick of sight ; and as he appeared at first to hesitate,
I waved my hand again, when he indicated, by his head, in his usual way,
that he understood me, and then he walked on. I was but a few minutes
in my effort to join him ; and it was when I found I could not see him, or
anybody like him, in any direction, that I was struck with the reniark-
ableness of the occurrence, and I stood fairly puzzled, as I must have
shown, for I noticed a passer-by looking at me in a sort of wondering way.

" The illness was quite sudden, and neither my friend nor myself had
any reason, prior to his seizure, to suppose that we should not meet, as
customary, on the morning mentioned. The case has been my only experi-
ence of a visual hallucination, with the exception of one (of a different
character) I had in my very youthful days. " JOHN H. JEVONS."

1 This was an apparition frequently seen by the residents in a particular house.

v.] VISUAL CASES. 529

[It is against the hypothesis of mistaken identity, that Mr. Jevons
remembers that the figure seemed distinctly to recognise his greeting.
Still it may have been a hallucination due to expectancy. See Vol. I.,
p. 516.]

(575) From a lady, Mrs. W., who desires that her name and address
may not be published, as she has a near relation who would much object
to their appearance. « February 20th, 1885.

" When a resident near Portsmouth, during a visit made by my late
mother to London in the summer of 1858, the year preceding her death,
I distinctly saw her walking in the back garden at noon-day. I was not
at the time thinking of her, but happening to look from my chamber
window, I beheld this figure, which, but for my parent's absence from
home, I should have supposed her veritable self. This incident led me to
conjecture something was amiss ; and this idea was confirmed when the
next morning's post brought me information that my mother had sustained
a severe fall, and was so badly hurt that at first fatal results was feared ;
and at the moment I fancied I saw her, her thoughts were bent on
telegraphing for me to go to her."

The following incident is perhaps worth quoting, as having occurred to
the same person : —

" A few years prior to this, when a girl of 16, an engagement was
formed between myself and a young naval officer, about to sail for the
African coast. He had promised my mother and self that he would write
us from Ascension. It chanced, some time after his departure, I accom-
panied a friend in a long country walk, when all at once a strange feeling
possessed me that this young officer was near. I seemed to feel the
clasp of his hand upon my wrist, yet I saw nothing, I had only felt a
presence. My companion asked why I looked so pale. I made an evasive
reply, and on returning home told my mother that ' Tom was dead ! ' She
tried to laugh away my fancy ; nevertheless, she noted the date of the
occurrence ; and when a brother of my own, then homeward bound from
the coast of Africa, arrived, the first words he spoke, after an exchange of
greetings, were, ' Oh, that poor fellow you sent letters by for me is dead 1
He died three days' sail from Ascension, and is buried on the island.'

" M. W."

We learn from Mrs. W. that she has not had any hallucinations which
there is reason to regard as merely subjective. She adds : —

".I cannot, owing to the many years that have passed since the
occurrences mentioned, furnish any dates ; my mother calculated that
the singular impression I received was as near as possible to the time of
our young friend's death. My brother who brought the tidings has been
deceased several years."

(576) Obtained through Mrs. Pears, of Walton, Clevedon. The narrative
was written down from the dictation of Mrs. C. — a relative of Mrs. Pears,
a daughter of the well-known Mrs. Fry, and a member of the Society of
Friends — who will not allow her name to be published, and entirely declines
to be further questioned on the subject. « ]y[arch 10th 1884

" On 14th November, 1837, or about that time, Mrs. C. was lying on a

VOL. II. 2 M

530 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

sofa in her drawing-room, reading attentively ; the sofa was facing the
light. Suddenly lifting her eyes from the book, she saw distinctly, standing
at the foot of the sofa, the figure of a person whom Mrs. C. knew by
sight, though she was not personally acquainted with him. She observed
how the figure was dressed, and even counted the buttons on his great-
coat ; five were visible above the rather high end of the sofa. The figure
was opaque ; Mrs. C. noticed that she could not see the piano through it.
After a few seconds, the figure disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

" A quarter of an hour afterwards, Mrs. C. received a visit from one
of the clergymen of the town, who came to tell her of the death, by
drowning at sea, of the person whose apparition she had just seen. The
clergyman had left the widow's house to come straight to Mrs. C., and
at the moment the apparition was present with Mrs. C., had been listening
to the widow's request that he would enlist her sympathy on behalf of
herself and her children."

[The remoteness of the case is again a serious weakness ; and the coin-
cidence is of a very singular type. At the same time the fact of the
news following immediately on the apparition is a striking one, hardly
likely to have been unconsciously imported into the narrative.]

The two following cases seem to fall into the class illustrated in
Chap. XIV., § 7, where persons are phantasmally seen or heard very
soon before their actual appearance in the flesh. I Jiave explained
(p. 96) that it is to some extent uncertain whether this is a genuine
telepathic type ; but the examples are worth recording ; and doubly
so where the time-coincidence is fortified (as here and in case 262)
by the further point that odd or unfamiliar details of appearance are
alleged to have been noted, and have proved to correspond with
reality.

(577) From Dr. Campbell Morfit, 1 32, Alexandra Road, N.W.

Writing on July 4th, 1885, Dr. Morfit first describes a couple of
business visits which he received at New York, in the year 1859 or
thereabouts, from a gentleman named Metarko, who then departed to his
home in the West.

" For a time that disappearance took him entirely out of my world ;
but one evening, nearly two years subsequently, I had been passing an
hour or two at a friend's, listening to some fine music. On my return,
in good health and spirits, I felt unusually wide awake, as recurs to mind
even at this moment, and in fact quite free from any susceptibility to
hallucination. Nevertheless, scarcely had I got into bed than there, at
the side, stood Metarko, looking as when he last was with me, but having
two new features, one a kind of excrescence on the cheek, and the other
a necktie of striking pattern. At first this sudden presence amused me
as a freak of the imagination, but became an annoyance when it would
not leave on my trying to dismiss it. The good part done him forbade
the idea that he had come to haunt me reproachfully, yet I was somewhat
disquieted ; and as my brother slept in a distant room upon the same floor,
I called to him through the open doors of the intermediate sitting-room,

v.] VISUAL CASES. 531

without receiving any answer. The apparition persisted, and I turned
my face from it to the wall, by way of exorcism ; and a few minutes
later, seemingly, though actually perhaps only seconds, found that it had
vanished.

" Seeking an explanation of the occurrence by reflecting upon it, I
arrived at the conclusion that Metarko had died that night at his distant
home, and the apparition was a psychological, incident to announce the
fact to me, though for what reason was beyond my imagination. The
circumstance, however, so absorbed my thoughts all the next day, that
when evening set in, I felt the need of diverting influences, and went
out visiting. On re-entering, about bedtime, I was greeted by my house-
keeper with the information that a stranger gentleman had called in my
absence, to request that I would allow him a consultation at 9 o'clock the
following morning. His name, she said, was on the slate, and there I
found it to be that of Metarko ! — in his own unmistakeable hand-
writing. This fact, astounding for the moment, recalled, vividly, the
apparition of the previous evening, so as to render me impatient for the
actual interview ; and when, at the appointed hour next day, he came in
the flesh, profound was my astonishment to find him then exactly as he
appeared in the vision 34 hours previously.

" After listening to the statement of his case, I asked him to call
again in the evening. He agreed to this arrangement, and left, but did
not return as promised ; and from that moment to the present I have never
seen or heard of him. Heralded by a spectre like itself, he departed.

"The incident noted was the only one of a 'psychical' character
that ever occurred to me.

" My brother being an unimpressionable man, and not sharing my
interest in the matter, has forgotten, most probably, all that I may have
told him about it at the time. But my housekeeper, a wom<an of con-
siderable intelligence and sympathetic nature, might remember. She was
even then, however, 20 years my senior, and if not now dead is a very old
woman, whose whereabouts has dropped out of my knowledge, and it
would be difficult to find her at present. « CAMPBELL MORFIT."

(578) From the Hon. Mrs. Pigott-Carleton, Greywell Hill, Winchfield,
Hants. The percipient, Lord Dorchester, is deceased ; but we have his
daughter's evidence to the fact that the anxiety which his experience
produced was obvious before he heard what her experience had been.

"July 5th, 1883.

"Early in September, 1872, I was with my father and husband at the
former's shooting lodge in Co. Tyrone. An old friend, Captain M., was
also staying there, and one afternoon it was arranged that I should
accompany this gentleman and a keeper on a fishing expedition. My
husband had some engagement, but my father walked a short way with
us. He never cared to have me long away from him, and, upon turning
back, remarked, as he left me, ' Don't get too far from home.'

" It was a brilliantly fine day ; I had a book with me, and often sat
down to read while the others fished. We were about four miles down the
river, when, chancing to look up from my novel, I perceived a heavy cloud
rising into sight above the mountains opposite. I saw we were ' in for ' a
drenching, thought how it would fidget my father, and wished myself at

VOL. II. 2 M 2

532 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

home with all my heart. In a few minutes the storm burst upon us.
Shelter there was next to none, and as soon as the deluge had somewhat
abated, we made for the lodge, looking as though we had all been barely
rescued from a watery grave. When nearly home, we were met by my
father, my husband, and several men employed about the place. It seemed
to me singular, not to say absurd, that my father should have turned him-
self and party out in such weather. Still more to my surprise, my father
evidently could not get over his disturbance, spoke little that evening, and
went off to bed earlier than usual.

" The next day he told me that some little time after his return from
the river, he sat down to read, with his back to the (western) window ;
that suddenly a shadow fell across the page ; that, turning his head, he saw
me standing at the half open window, my arms resting upon the push-down
sash ; that he said, ' Hallo ! Back already ! ' that I made no reply, but
apparently stepped down off the low outer window sill and disappeared ;
that he put a mark in his book, got up, and looked out of the window ;
that, not seeing me, he first went to the servants and asked if I had come
in at the back door ; and then went out on to the little terrace before the
lodge and looked around for me ; that he suddenly caught sight of the
coming storm-cloud ; that his bewilderment changed to uneasiness, and
that my husband just then coming in they speedily started in search.

" HENRIETTA PIGOTT-CARLETON."

[This may, of course, have been a purely subjective experience ; but it
cannot well be attributed to any special expectation in the percipient's
mind ; and its coincidence with his daughter's thought of him, and desire
to be at home, is at any rate striking. If the detail of the shadow on the
page is correctly reported, the case well exemplifies the development of
a phantasm in two stages (Vol. I., p. 520).]

§. 3. A large group of second-hand cases remains. For convenience,
I will again divide them into accounts received from near relatives
of the percipients, and from others.

(579) From Mr. J. N. Maskelyne, originally printed as part of a
letter in the Daily Telegraph.

11 Egyptian Hall.

" October 21st, 1881.

" SIR, — Having for many years been recognised by the public as an
anti-Spiritualist and exposer of the frauds practised by spirit media, it
may surprise some of your readers to learn that I am a believer in appari-
tions. Several similar occurrences to those described by many of your
correspondents have taken place in my own family, and in the families of
near friends and relatives. The most remarkable one happened to my
wife's mother some years ago. Late one evening, whilst sitting alone
busily occupied with her needle, a strange sensation came over her, and
upon looking up she distinctly saw her aged mother standing at the end
of the room. She rubbed her weary eyes and looked again, but the
spectre had vanished. She concluded it was imagination, and retired to
rest, thinking nothing more of the vision, until the next day brought the

v.] VISUAL CASES. 533

news that her mother, at about the same time the apparition had appeared,

had fallen down in a tit and expired. XT -. r „

" JOHN N EVIL MASKELYNE.

In answer to our inquiries, Mr. Maskelyne writes that he regrets not
to be able to get this case from his wife's mother in her own words. " She
was a little vexed with me," he says, " for giving publicity to the circum-
stance. I have written it exactly as I have often heard her relate it."

(580) From a gentleman who prefers that his name should not appear.

" October 31st, 1884.

" An occurrence which happened to my father, and which I have
several times heard him mention circumstantially, was as follows : —

" My father, Lieutenant W. C. B., was in command of a gunbrig
stationed to keep off slavers on the West Coast of Africa, in 1834. In the
October of that year, he was alone in his cabin when he noted distinctly,
as he thought, my mother appear to him. He noted down the circum-
stance in his logbook,1 giving time and date ; but the effect on his mind
was so great that on his return to England at the close of the year from
ill-health, he called for a file of the Times directly he landed in Portsmouth,
and looked to the month in question, and there found that my mother had
died that very night that the appearance came to him, but which he had
no means of learning earlier, owing to the difficulty of communication by
letter in those days."

We find from the Times obituary that our informant's mother died on
October 11, 1834.

(581) From Mr. E. Stephenson, School House, Market Weighton,
Yorkshire. His mother's signature, attached since the account was placed
in its present position, makes it really first-hand.

" November 25th, 1884.

" I am master of the boys' school and organist of the parish church at
Weighton. My mother's maiden name was Jane Cooling. Several years
ago (about 10 or 12) she told me a remarkable story which sank deeply
into my mind. I got her to tell me the whole of her story again, and it
was exactly the same as that she had told years before. I cross-questioned
her, but always got the same answers. My mother is 65 years of age.
Her mind is quite clear and her memory very good. The affair happened
when she was about 16 or 17 years old, and she maintains that even
yet she can see (in imagination) her brother as fairly as she saw him
then.

" The following is the story, which I have recently taken down care-
fully from her own lips. Having subjected my mother to some very close
questioning, I feel sure that you may depend upon the statements being
trustworthy.

" Henry Cooling, the brother of Jane Cooling, was a sailor, and had*
gone on a long voyage. Jane was living in Hull in the house of Mr.
Kitching, Mytongate. There was a large cupboard in the house, which
was on a kind of landing, approached by two or three steps. Just as she
was about to go up to it, she saw distinctly, about 5 p.m., her brother

i See Vol. i., p. 161, note.

534 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Henry standing in front of the door. His eyes were fixed on her for a
short time, and then he disappeared towards the left. He was dressed in
his seaman's drawers and shirt. The strings of his drawers were loose ; his
feet were bare ; his hair was untidy ; and his whole appearance was like
that of one roused suddenly from sleep.

" After the vision had vanished, as soon as she recovered' herself, she
went home to her father, and told him what she had seen. He said it was
all nonsense, and told her to take no notice of it. However, some days
later, a letter came from the captain of the ship, stating that Henry
Cooling had been washed overboard during a gale in the Bay of Biscay,
just as he was called on deck to assist in working the ship, and the time
he gave as about the time of the accident corresponded approximately to
that at which my mother saw the vision.

" Since the above was written, I have found the exact date of my
uncle's death — March 27th, 1836. My mother would, therefore, be 17
within a few days. « jj g »

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Stephenson writes, on Dec. 2, 1884 : —

" I remember my mother telling us the story several years ago, while
her father was living in our house, and I have no recollection of anything
but his fullest assent to what she told. You will remember that in my
previous letter, I stated that she told her father what she had seen, several
days before they knew what had happened. I could almost swear that I
have heard him affirm, but will not do so- as I do not exactly recollect the
occasion, and do not wish to give you anything but the purest evidence in
such a matter.

" My mother confidently affirms that she saw the vision at that hour,
5 p.m., and, as far as she can remember, the letter from the captain of the
vessel several days afterwards confirmed her statement as to the time, and
the being called from his berth. We cannot find the captain's letter.

"My mother has not, when completely awake, had any other appari-
tion or hallucination, except the one furnished you." [The words " when
completely awake " simply reproduce the form in which the question was
asked.J « (Signed as correct) JANE STEPHENSON."

(582) From Mrs. Ricardo, 8, Chesham Street, S.W.

"April 6th, 1885.

" I can only recollect the story rather imperfectly, though I have often
heard my father, the late Colonel Campbell, of Skipness, tell it.

" On a fine summer's evening, between 8 and 9 o'clock (still quite light
in the Highlands), about 40 years ago or more, my father was walking to
the old ruined castle of Skipness, which was a short distance from the
more modern house. He had fitted up a turning lathe and workshop in
one of the old rooms, and was going to fetch some tool which he had for-
gotten in the day. As he approached the gate of the courtyard he saw
two of the fishermen (brothers), Walter and John Cook, leaning against
the wall rather stiffly. Being in a hurry he merely nodded, said something
about its being a fine evening and went on. He was surprised that they
did not answer him, which was very unlike their usual custom, but being
in a hurry did not think much of it, and when he returned, they were gone.
That night a sudden gale sprang up in the middle of the night. Next

v.] VISUAL CASES. 535

morning, when my father went out to see what damage had been done, he
met some fishermen carrying up a dead body from the beach. He inquired,
' Who is it 1 ' They said, ' Walter Cook, and they are just bringing his
brother John's body too. Their boat capsized when they were out with
the herring fleet last night, and they were both drowned.' My father said,
' It can't be, they never went to the fishing, for I saw them and spoke to
them between 8 and 9 last night. ' ' Impossible, laird ! for they both sailed
with the rest of the fleet between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, and never
returned.' My father never believed in second-sight or wraiths, but said
this completely puzzled him. It must have been second-sight, as the men
were not yet dead when he saw them,1 though it was absolutely impossible
that they could have been on land at the time. This, as far as I
can remember, is the story, but I cannot be quite exact as to date and
hours. "ANNETTE RICARDO."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Ricardo writes : —

1. " Colonel Campbell never had any other experiences of the kind,
and always laughed at any superstitions or fancies of the kind.

2. " His sight was remarkably keen and long ; a splendid shot, &c.
[He was known as a spirited writer on Indian field sports.]

3. " He was always quite certain that the men were the Cooks, and
recognised and spoke to them by name.

4. " It was well known that the Cooks went with the rest between
3 and 4 o'clock ; every boat is seen and recognised as it leaves the bay,
and they could not possibly return without its being also known.

5. " The place was not a usual one for the fishermen to lounge, being the
walls of our old castle, in the grounds, and the men's attitude was so stiff
that Colonel Campbell imagined they had been drinking.

" I have just been talking to an elder relation of the family, who had
heard my father tell the story, and he corroborates these facts, only not

1 If the men were in a perfectly normal state when the phantasms were seen, the
incident could not be properly included among the telepathic cases in this book (Vol. i.,
p. 140). But the evidence is quite uncertain as to hours ; and there seems at any rate an
appreciable probability that the deaths coincided with or preceded Colonel Campbell's
experience.

This suggests a more general remark. In Vol. i., p. 122, when contrasting telepathy
with various beliefs which have been, or still are, popular superstitions, I included among
these the belief in the prophetic gift of "second-sight." But a careful study of the
recorded cases will show that the prophetic character which popularly attached to them
was not infrequently a pure assumption. The time of the occurrence of distant events
was apt to be confused with the time of hearing of them ; and visions and impressions are
described as having preceded, and been fulfilled by, events which, for aught that
appears, they may have coincided with or shortly followed. (See, e.g., the narratives
given in Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland, by Walter Gregor,
p. 205 ; in Howells' Cambrian Svperstitions, p. 57 ; and in the Treatise on Second Sight, by
Theophilus Insulanus (1763), p. GO ; and see also p. 59.) In days when no distinct con-
ception of psychical transference had been formed, and when supersensuous influences
were regarded as necessarily supernatural, it is not surprising that effects produced
backwards, so to speak, by events still to come, should have been as readily accepted as
the coincidental impressions of what we should now call spontaneous telepathy : if
the prophetic idea seemed the more marvellous, that would only be an inducement to give
it the most extensive application. Not that I would attempt to save the credit of these
cases by representing any of them as conclusively telepathic ; as a rule, the reports on
which they rest have had too many chances of being distorted and exaggerated to serve
any evidential purpose whatever. But it is of interest to note here (as before in some of
the alleged incidents connected with witchcraft, Vol. i., p. 119) that the residue of fact
which might remain, after exaggeration, baseless assumption, and wrong inference had
been allowed for, is such as the telepathic explanation would go far to cover.

536 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

quite sure whether the fleet went at 3 or 4, and thinks the apparition was
seen about 9 in the evening.

" My brother-in-law (Captain Macneal, of Ugadale, Losset Park,
Campbeltown, Argyllshire) encloses his statement. There are many others
who have heard the story from Colonel Campbell. I do not know if the
accident was seen to happen, or if only the boat and dead bodies were
found. I have always believed that the accident occurred between 12 and
1, or 1 and 2 in the morning."

Captain Macneal writes, on April 18, 1885 : —

" I have heard Colonel Campbell frequently relate the story regarding
the Channel fishermen, just as his daughter has related it to you.

"H. MACNEAL."

[We have received two other independent accounts of this occurrence
from persons who had heard Colonel Campbell narrate it. These agree
with the above in the fundamental point of the apparition of the fishermen
occurring at or near the time of their death ; but one of them difiers in
a good many details, and adds an incident which, from the fact that we
have never met with it in first-hand narratives, we should judge to
be improbable — namely, that the apparition was seen again at the same
spot after a considerable interval — when Colonel Campbell was returning
home. If this really occurred, it would suggest that either the real men
were seen, (which however is impossible, if the hours are correctly
stated by Mrs. Ricardo,) or that a real object was mistaken for them.
The phantasmal representation of several dying persons is unexampled
in our first-hand evidence ; but see case 536. As might be expected,
it is a feature that is met with in the more legendary records ; see, e.g.,
Sacheverell's Account of the Isle of Man, (1702), p. 14.]

(583) From Dr. Frank Comer, 79, Queen's Gate, South Kensington,

S-W- "October 5th, 1885.

"In the year 1820 or 1821, my grandfather, Geo. Miller, M.D., who
was a physician practising in Newry, Ireland, emigrated with his family
to Canada and settled in the town of Niagara, Upper Canada. On their
way to Niagara from Quebec, having reached the town of Prescott, which
is above all the rapids of the St. Lawrence River, they then embarked on
a sailing vessel commanded by a Captain Patterson. As the voyage from
Prescott to Niagara in those days would probably occupy about a week,
the passengers would undoubtedly become pretty well acquainted with the
captain of the little vessel. About 6 or 8 weeks after the arrival of my
grandfather and his family in Niagara, my grandmother (who, by the way,
was a lady of more than ordinary sound practical common-sense, and not
at all visionary) was walking in an orchard at the back of her house, about
3 o'clock in the afternoon, when Captain Patterson passed close by her
and looked straight in her face. At first she was dumbfounded, not
having heard his footsteps, but recovering from her surprise she extended
her hand to shake hands with him ; but he merely smiled and passed out of
sight behind a small out-building.

" Upon my grandfather's return home, my grandmother told him of the
occurrence, but he smiled and said she must have been dreaming, as
Captain Patterson and his vessel were then at the other end of the Lake
(Ontario) ; but she insisted that she was wide awake, that it was a clear

v.] VISUAL CASES. 537

/bright afternoon, and that she certainly had seen him or his apparition.
/ A few days later the vessel arrived in Niagara, and the mate who was in
charge reported that the Captain (Patterson) had been washed overboard
during a gale at the lower end of the Lake. Upon inquiry it turned out
that it was the same day, and (as nearly as could be judged) the very same
hour, that grandmother Miller had seen his apparition in the garden. My
mother, Mrs. J. F. R. Comer, was a girl of 10 or 11 years at the time,
and remembers her mother and others talking about the occurrence at the
time and afterwards, and she herself still remembers Captain Patterson.
She is now in her 76th year, and is again living in Niagara, Ontario,
Canada. "FRANK COMER."

Dr. Comer sent us the original of the following extract from a letter
written by his mother : —

" In one of my letters I gave Frank an account of the drowning
of Captain Patterson, on his second voyage up from Prescott, in a storm,
and .of my mother seeing him pass near the black cherry-tree. It was
written on a separate sheet of paper. Did you not get it ? I mean the
second voyage after he brought my father's family from Prescott to
Niagara."

(584) From Mr. T. L. Moore, 6, Downshire Hill, Hampstead.

" September, 1884.

" My father, Major-General George Frederick Moore, whose death took
place on the 8th of this month, has frequently related to me and to others
the following incident. When in India, in the year 1848, very shortly
before the siege of Mooltan, he occupied a bungalow at some place in that
neighbourhood (the name of which I cannot give with certainty), and had
a household consisting of the usual number of native servants. Among
these was a woman who was a laundress, and part of whose weekly duty
was to bring my father's clean linen to the bungalow, and deposit it in
his bedroom for use.

" This woman met with an accident, which ended in tetanus. One
day, it being fully light, my father was lying on a sofa in his sitting-
room, the woman being somewhere in the compound, and in extremis, as
he knew, from lockjaw. The door was open, and, as he lay on the sofa, he
could see down a passage, which ended in another door (also open), leading
to the compound. This latter was the main entrance to the bungalow,
and anyone coming up the passage would go either into the sitting-room,
or, turning at right angles, down another passage which led to the bed-
room and adjoining bathroom. While lying on the sofa, in full view of
the entrance-passage, my father was astonished to see his laundress enter
from the compound, pass up the passage, carrying, as was her custom, his
clean linen.1 Upon reaching the sitting-room door she turned down the
corridor, leading, as before explained, to the bedroom. He immediately
rose and followed her, knowing that she must be in either the bed or the
bath room, from which there was no exit save by the way she had com.e,
but no one was to be seen. Much perplexed, he repaired to the compound
and found her lying dead, having at that moment expired. My father
described her appearance as perfectly definite in every way, wearing the
same clothes and bangle ornaments which she used to do when alive ; and

1 As to the projection of the hallucinatory figure with familiar dress or appurtenances,
see Vol. i., pp. 539-40.

538 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

her apparition was so palpable that it was the knowledge of her impending
death which caused him to follow her into the bedroom and bathroom.

" That this appearance was not that of any living person is proved by
the fact of there being no exit from these two rooms save by the passage
down which the apparition walked. « TEMPLE L. MOORE."

Mr. Arthur G. Hill, of 47, Belsize Avenue, Hampstead, writes : —

" September, 1884.

" The late General Moore narrated the above account to me in the
presence of his son a few weeks ago, very shortly before his death, and
had no doubt whatever of the reality of the ' wraith.' He had intended
to dictate an account, at my request, specially for the S.P.R. He was
the most unimaginative and strong-minded man imaginable."

[Mr. Hill mentions that this was not General Moore's solitary experi-
ence of hallucination, as he had once seen the figure of his brother, two
days after his brother's death.]

(585) From Mr. H., a journalist, who desires that names may not be
published. The account has been submitted to the first-hand witness, who
is perfectly willing that it should appear, and may be taken to admit its
correctness. « November 1 2th, 1883.

" Many years ago, my father had an intimate and dear friend, a doctor,
who had to pass every winter in Madeira. One night my father was going
to his rooms, in the Strand, when, on the stairs, coming down, he met, as
he thought, poor Dr. G. So vivid was the illusion, that he held out his
hand, and, I believe, spoke. Of that I am not certain. The ghost, or
whatever it might have been, looked at my father, and passed down the
stairs. Some little time afterwards, my father received news of his friend's
death. It happened, I believe, on the very day my father met with his
little adventure. This is the story as I have heard my parent tell it.

" Visitations or warnings of this kind are common enough, and I
remember perfectly well that the affair, hallucination or not, impressed
my father very much — not that he is by any means a superstitious man."

[The percipient cannot remember the precise date of the occurrence,
which took place more than 30 years ago.]

(586) From Colonel V., who writes, in a letter dated March 11, 1886,
" The account was written by me from a statement made to me by my
father, the late Capt. J. H. V., in 1864. The words are my father's, and
I wrote them as he related them to me." Names were given in confidence.

" One of my [i.e., Colonel V.'s, not his father's] grand-aunts was Mrs.
F., married to an officer, Major or Colonel F., of the Dragoons, serving in
George III.'s time in America. He was killed at the battle of Saratoga.
My aunt lived at the time in Portland Place, W., and was entertaining a
large party one evening. Suddenly they remarked she seemed to be in great
pain and agony, exclaiming quite aloud to her guests, ' Oh, do go home. I
have seen a most fearful sight, and am compelled to break up the party.'
Some of her most intimate friends asked her what she had seen. She
replied that she was certain ' her husband F. had been killed in a battle,
and that she most distinctly saw his body being carried to the rear by his
soldiers.' She remained in great anxiety for weeks, when the sad news
confirming her vision arrived from America, and that at the hour she
made the exclamation to her guests, her husband, F., of the Dragoons

v.] VISUAL CASES. 539

(allowing for difference of longitude), was killed in an attack made on the
enemy at the battle of Saratoga."

Colonel V. adds, " An aunt now deceased, told me she was, when a girl,
present at the time when [her aunt] Mrs. F. called out ' that F. had been
shot, and that she saw his body being carried off the field of battle.' "

We find from Burgoyne's Campaign, by Charles Neilson (Albany,
1844), that Brigadier-General F. was wounded at the battle of Saratoga,
at 2 p.m. on Oct. 7, 1777, but did not die till 8 a.m. on Oct. 8. From
Letters and Memoirs relating to the American War of Independence, by
Madame Riedesel (Translation, New York, 1827), we learn that he was
carried to Madame Riedesel's hut at about 3 p.m., which would correspond
with about 8 p.m. in London ; and that during the afternoon, while he
was lying mortally wounded, he frequently uttered his wife's name.1

[We have no means of judging whether the vision of the soldiers carry-
ing the body was of the clairvoyant type, or whether the scene was merely a
setting supplied by the percipient's own mind. Nor can we judge how far
the experience was an externalised hallucination. (See Vol. I., p. 545, note.)]

(587) From Mrs. Hackett, 10, Steele's Road, Haverstock Hill, N.W.

" September 26th, 1883.

" The incident which I have often heard my father [James Dawson]
speak about was that one of the men on board my grandfather's ship was
ill, and could not be induced to eat anything. He said if he could have a
piece of game-pie, he thought he could eat that. When grandfather got
home (the ship was then in dock in London), he found a hamper had
arrived from Yorkshire and in it was a game-pie. My father at once
begged to take a piece to the man. He had it tied up in a cloth, to be
able to hold it more securely in going up the side of the ship. When
nearly at the top of the ladder, he said he distinctly saw his sister dressed
in white. It so unnerved him that he dropped the pie into the water.
His sister was living in Yorkshire, near Flamborough Head. As soon as a
letter could be had in those days, they heard this sister [Jane Foster] died
at that time, and he was the person she spoke of last. I never heard my father
say he had seen anything of the kind before or afterwards.

"C. J. HACKETT."

1 1 append the following version of the same incident (received from a lady of sense
and great practical ability), as illustrating what I have before emphasised (Vol. i., p. 149) —
the difference in evidential value between a record given by a person nearly connected with
the original witness, and having command of the circumstances, and a story casually
picked up from an acquaintance. The essential point of a telepathic vision remains ; but
almost every detail is altered ; and, as so frequently happens in such cases, the chain of
evidence is shortened, and the narrator's informant is represented as the person to whom
the experience occurred. She was really the " aunt now deceased " of Colonel V.

"March 14, 1884.

" Mrs. V., whose husband was in the Artillery in India, told me the following
occurred to herself. The story is well known in her family. She has been dead some
years, and it occurred when she was comparatively a young woman. I heard it from her
23 years ago last Christmas, at Southampton. One evening, sitting in her drawing-room,
she saw distinctly a military funeral procession pass at the further end of the room. The
coffin borne on a gun-carriage ; the men with arms reversed. Directly it passed away, she
noted the circumstance, writing it down, and passed some months in the greatest anxiety.
It was before the days of overland route. She heard of her husband's death, which had
occurred that day, and allowing for the difference of time, the funeral had taken place at
the moment she had seen the vision, death and burial following each other within a few
hours in India." The "arms reversed," the "overland route, and the remark about
" death and burial," show that a report is not more likely to be accurate for being circum-
stantial.

540 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

[No one, perhaps, will imagine that a fictitious narrative would take
such a form as this — the apparition coming in as a mere episode in the
pie's history. But the incident is remote, having occurred, Mrs. Hackett
thinks, before 1830. She last heard the account from her father about
1850. She told Mr. Podmore on April 18, 1886, that a surviving aunt of
hers remembers hearing the account from Mr. Dawson, but is too old to
be applied to for dates, <fec.]

(588) From Mr. J. H. Redfern, 20, Great Ancoats Street, Manchester,
the narrator of case 214.

" The following narrative I give you as I have had it often from the
lips of my wife. The circumstance took place a number of years ago.
She repeated it often. I have ridiculed it, made fun of it, &c. It had
no effect upon her. She was a quiet, thoughtful, upright woman ; and
so far as the thing appeared to her, all who knew her would be satisfied
as to the accuracy of the statement as given by her. She was a native of
Worksop, Notts. A Mr. Drobble, an old friend of her father's, residing
not far away, was fond of her even as a child, and as she grew up, petted
and made much of her ; this continued, and she always regarded him as
an intimate and dear friend. In winter, or at any time going from home,
he wore an old-fashioned great-coat of drab cloth. I mention this as it
was of peculiar make, and the only one of the kind about that part of the
country. [She left home, and was staying at Stockport.] In that town, in
a street called Underbank, is an old-fashioned mansion with a large court-
yard in the front. It was (and is now) a branch of the Manchester and
Liverpool District Bank. Being one day about noon there, and chancing
to look through a window into the street, she saw on the footpath
opposite the bank, and looking up at the building, Mr. Drobble. He had
on his drab overcoat, and appeared as if he was upon the point of coming
through the gateway into the courtyard. She saw him (she said) face to
face. She instantly stepped out of the bank, across the courtyard —
expecting to meet him — into the street. He had disappeared. On each
side of the bank were shops. She fancied that he must have gone into
some of them. She followed, as she thought, but could see nothing of
him. She felt much disappointed ; but gradually the thing was in a great
measure forgotten.

" Fifteen or eighteen months after, she went home to Worksop. After
some days, incidentally she asked her mother how Mr. Drobble was. Her
mother stared at her at first, and then asked her what ever she was talk-
ing about? Mr. Drobble had been dead for more than 12 months. My
wife, in her turn, protested that she saw him, face to face, in broad day-
light ; that it was impossible that she could be mistaken in the matter ;
and to this she adhered to her dying day.

" Upon further inquiry it appeared that Mr. Drobble had died at
about the time of the day when she believed that she saw him, and so near
as they could get at it, on the same day ; and that he had been confined
to bed for something like 9 or 10 months previous to his death.

" It appeared also that they had never sent word of his death, and
she had never learned it until in the way, and at the time, here told."

Mrs. Hannah Lees, of Clifton Crescent, Rotherham, writes to us : —

v.] VISUAL CASES. 541

"I can confirm the truth of Mr. Drobble's death when sister Redfern
was away. I was with her at home, when, as described by Mr. Redfern,
she asked about him, and only then learned of his death. Nothing could
shake her belief in the fact of her having seen him at the time, and in the
manner described."

[Mr. Redfern assures us that he had not exchanged a word on the
subject with Mrs. Lees for years, and that her testimony has been given
without his having in any way refreshed her memory. But the degree of
closeness in the coincidence is uncertain ; and the case may possibly have
been one of mistaken identity.]

The next case is perhaps an example of the rare type where the
operative idea in the agent's mind was of the place in which (rather
than of the person by whom) the phantasm is seen. (Vol. I., p. 268.)

(589) From the Rev. W. S. Grignon, The Grove, Pluckley, Kent.

"24th October, 1882.

" The date was between 1820 and 1830. My father made a journey
from Montego Bay to Spanish Town, to attend the session of the ' House
of Assembly ' of Jamaica, of which he was a member, and passed a night
en route at the house of a friend whose name I cannot now remember.
The family consisted of his friend, his friend's wife, and the wife's sister, a
Miss R. (we will call her so ; I know the name but have perhaps no right
to give it). This young lady was out of health, and in a very depressed
state. After dinner the ladies left the room, and my father shortly after
strolled out of doors in the very brief twilight of a tropical day. To his
surprise he saw Miss R. going along a path from the house towards a
clump of trees not far from it ; he was not very near her, but called out to
her. She proceeded on her way without taking any notice of him ;
supposing that she wished to be alone, he turned off in another direction,
and shortly after returned to the house. On entering the drawing-room
he found his friend and his wife there, and Miss R. also there, reclining
on a sofa. When he came in she rose and left the room. He said to
his friend's wife, ' Do you think it safe for your sister to go out of
doors so late, with a heavy dew falling ? I met her outside a few minutes
ago.' ' You must *be mistaken ; she came in here with me from the
dining-room, lay down on the sofa, and I am quite certain, did not leave
it. till just now on your entrance. I have been here the whole time.'
They were all puzzled by his certainty that he had seen Miss R., and
some time having passed without her returning to the room, she was
looked for and not found in the house. On further search outside, she
was found dead, having hanged herself on one of the trees in the clump
towards which my father had seen her, or the appearance of her,
moving.

" It must be remembered that the servants about the place were all
negroes or brown people. Had such a thing happened in England it might
be thought that some female servant, sufficiently like Miss R. in figure to
be taken for her at a little distance, had been seen. There this could not
have been. Probably the poor girl was, while reclining on the sofa,

542 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

thinking, with an intentness which the sane mind cannot easily conceive,
of her purpose of suicide and the place she had chosen for it. Could this
have had the effect of visibly projecting the appearance of her form
towards the place?

"W. S. GRIGSON."

[In spite of the special reason suggested for rejecting the hypothesis
of mistaken identity, we can scarcely feel, in so remote a case, that we
realise the circumstances with sufficient completeness to justify confidence
on. that point. If the vision was not flesh and blood, it is certainly
difficult to resist the conclusion that it was of telepathic origin.]

(590) From a teacher in the Gymnasium of Tver, Russia, whose name
we are asked not to print. The first-hand account was sent by Mr.
Vladislavleff, of Tver, to Mr. Bruhns, who translated it for us.

" 1883.

The narrator begins by saying that about 1856, when a boy of 12, he
was a collegian of the first Moscow Gymnasium, and that his parents lived
about 250 miles from Moscow. " One morning in the beginning of April, I
went as usual to the Arkhangelsk Cathedral in the Kremlin. The liturgy
had already commenced. The church was, as usual, full of worshippers. At
the beginning of the liturgy I accidentally turned my head, and to my
greatest surprise saw in the crowd of worshippers my mother, praying, and
with her eyes directed to the holy images, like- other worshippers round her.
She was dressed in her usual dress. My astonishment was very great, for
I knew very well that my parents were then at home. I spent the whole
liturgy in looking at her, and in thinking of the incident. Meanwhile the
liturgy had come to an end, and the worshippers began to kiss the cross.
Among others, my mother approached the priest. Fearing to lose sight of
her, I went through the crowd of worshippers which surrounded the priest
with the cross, and when she, after having kissed the cross, went to the
door, I went after her. She went out of the door, advanced some feet, and
then stopped at the corner, formed by the wall of the cathedral itself and
the wall of the altar, and in such a manner that her face turned towards
the crowd which was passing by her. Going after the worshippers, I
approached her. I saw her looking at me and weeping, her tears flowing
down her cheeks. I stopped momentarily, but the crowd continued to pass
by us, and I all at once understood that I saw before me something
extraordinary — something that was visible to me alone. An inexpressible
terror seized me, and I cannot remember how I reached our lodging. But
I told nobody of the incident.

" The summer came. We went home to our parents. When we
arrived, we heard of our mother's death : she died precisely at the
beginning of April. Our father did not inform us about this death fearing
the sorrowful news might disturb our May examinations in the University
and in the Gymnasium."

[If this report is accurate, the case does not look like one of mistaken
identity. But the extraordinarily prolonged character of the apparition
suggests exaggeration (compare case 300) ; and the more so when the youth
of the percipient is remembered.]

v.] VISUAL CASES. 543

§ 4. The cases in this section are narrated by persons not closely
related to the respective percipients.

(591) From Dr. de Wolf, Providence, R.I., — a letter to Professor
Barrett. "August 28th, 1884.

" I have been for many years a practitioner of medicine in this city ;
my birthplace was the town of Bristol, some 15 miles distant, where I
resided for more than 30 years, and for the greater part of that time was
a next-door neighbour of Right Rev. A. V. Eriswold, Bishop of the
Eastern Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and who died some
40 years ago. He was, as all Churchmen in this country know, greatly
esteemed for his talents and piety.

" For what follows the Bishop himself was my informant. He told it
to others, and I heard it frequently spoken of by different members of
the family.

" One afternoon, while standing at his desk writing in his study, a
door opened1 from an adjoining room, and Mr. Collins, his son-in-law,
entered, and passed slowly through the room and out of another door ;
the Bishop said he had not been thinking or talking of Mr. Collins, and
had not heard from him for some time. He knew that he could not be
within a thousand miles of him, and yet he had distinctly seen him pass
through the room. This of itself was a very remarkable occurrence, but
what follows renders it still more so.

" When the mail from Charleston arrived some 3 or 4 days after
(there were no telegraphs or railroads at that time), a letter was received
announcing the death of Mr. Collins, on the very day and hour when the
Bishop saw him apparently pass through his study.

" The good Bishop (who was no believer in ghosts, necromancy, or
anything of the sort) said it was a most remarkable and singular circum-
stance, the coincidence rendering it still more remarkable, and he could
not account for it, but supposed it must be some sort of a hallucination ;
for, as he was standing at a high desk, he could hardly have been
dreaming. " JOHN J. DE WOLF, M.D."

Dr. de Wolf has kindly inspected the tombstone of Mr. Collins, which
shows that he died on July 4th, 1807. Dr. de Wolf has also endeavoured to
find some other person who has heard the account direct from the Bishop ;
but in this he has failed. The Bishop's grandchildren have all heard of
the occurrence, but not at first hand. One of them told Dr. de Wolf that
the Bishop himself was disposed to say very little about it.

(592) Copy of part of a letter from Miss M. A. Ewart, of 3, Morpeth
Terrace, Victoria Street, S.W., to Mrs. Sidgwick, dated April 4, 1886.

" I waited to write until I had seen Mr. Henry Clarke, who was
brother-in-law to Mr. Guthrie, Vicar of Calne, in Wilts, who told me at
dinner at Bowood, about 1860, of the apparition of Lord Kerry, as I
described it to you. Mr. Clarke had no recollection of having heard Mr.
Guthrie tell the story, and did not know it ; but he said that Mr. Guthrie
was greatly attached to Lord Kerry, who was his pupil, and that Lady

1 Compare cases 530 and 537. This form of hallucination is met with also in purely
subjective cases.

544 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Lansdowne was always very grateful to Mr. Guthrie for the influence he
had over her son. Lord Kerry died in 1 836. Mr. Clarke could not say
that he died at Bowood.

" It was in the beech avenue, approaching the house at Bowood, that
Mr. Guthrie told me he met Lord Kerry, when he was going to the house
to see him, knowing him to be unwell and shut up. When he reached the
house, the servant told him that Lord Kerry had died a few minutes
before, and, as Mr. Guthrie believed, at the moment he had met him,
walking briskly, and surprising him so much that he did not attempt to
stop him. Lord and Lady Kerry lived in a house I know well, close to
Bowood (where Mr. Clarke's sister, Mrs. Warren, now lives), but Mr.
Clarke says that they may have been at Bowood at the time of his death.
Mr. Clarke was then in China. I am sorry that I cannot tell you more.

" M. A. EWART."

[This narrative belongs, no doubt, to a type which as a rule is untrust-
worthy— having been told to our informant by an acquaintance, not a
relative or intimate friend, and on one occasion only. But the facts, it
will be seen, are of the very simplest kind, and are presented without any
attempt at ornament or detail ; and Miss Ewart's acquaintance with the
locality would naturally tend to fix the simple lines of the picture in her
mind.]

(593) From Mr. P. H. Berthon, F.R.G.S., 20, Margaret Street, W.
The narrative was sent to Professor Barrett in 1875.

" Some years ago, when residing at Walthamstow, in Essex, my wife
and self became intimate with a lady and gentleman who had become
temporarily our near neighbours. On one occasion, when they were dining
with us quite enfamille, my friend and I, on repairing to the drawing-
room, not long after the ladies had left us, were surprised to find that his
wife had been suddenly taken with a kind of fainting fit, and had been
obliged to return home accompanied by one of our female servants. My
wife, as a matter of course, went the next day to inquire after her friend,
who then told her that the cause of her sudden indisposition had been
the appearance, as if in her actual person standing before her, of one of
her two sisters, who were then residing with their mother at Beyrout, in
Syria, which had greatly alarmed her. Communication by telegraph had
not then been established, and by post it was much slower than at
present. Many days had therefore elapsed before the lady received letters
from Beyrout, but on their arrival they conveyed the intelligence that
her sister had died on the day and, allowing for the difference in the
time, at about the hour of her appearance to our friend."

In conversation, Mr. Berthon told the present writer that the lady,
Mrs. de Salome', was playing the piano when she saw her sister's figure
at her side. Mr. Berthon did not hear of the incident from Mrs. de
Salome" herself, but was at once told of it by his wife, and was also told at
once of the arrival of the news. He frequently saw Mrs. de Salome* during
the interval. He says also that his daughter, who was 12 at the time,
distinctly remembers hearing of the circumstances at the time. Mrs. de
Salome* died soon after the occurrence, which took place in the autumn
of 1853. Mrs. Berthon is also deceased.

v.] VISUAL CASES. 545

(594) From Dr. H. T. Berry, 29, Pembridge Crescent, Bayswater.

" December 29th, 1884.

" Although living now at Bayswater, I have been in practice in the
North of London for nearly 40 years. The following account I can vouch
for in every particular, but remember I draw no inference from it.

" Some five or six years since, I was attending Mrs. A., in the neigh-
bourhood of Gray's Inn Road. The lady became so ill that she sent for
her mother, residing nearly one hundred miles from town, to nurse her. Some
eight or ten days after, I made my usual morning call, and found Mrs. A.
improving, and her mother quite well. About 3 o'clock in the afternoon
of the same day, I was hastily summoned to Mrs. A.'s house. When I
arrived, Mrs. A. was no worse, but her mother had suddenly dropped down
dead in a fit. I telegraphed to the husband [Mrs. A.'s father] to come to
town directly, not telling him of his wife's death, fearing to alarm him too
suddenly. When the husband came up (he was a very intelligent man,
about 70) he told me he was not surprised to find his wife dead when he
arrived in town. For, about the time of her death, he was returning to his
home, through a field, when he distinctly saw his wife cross the field a few
yards from him. As he went home he called at a friend's house, and said,
' I am sure my wife is dead. When I reached home I found the telegram
asking me to come up directly ; but I felt certain my poor wife was dead.'
As I said in my note, I make no theory to explain the above. The facts I
know of my own personal knowledge.

" H. T. BERRY."

In a subsequent letter, Dr. Berry says, " The old man told me him-
self, within 24 hours of the vision. I don't think he is living now."
He adds that the incident occurred in the summer of 1880 ; and that
he attended the inquest.

He has given us, in confidence, the name and address of his patient,
but does not allow us to apply to her. As he does not remember her
mother's name, we have had some difficulty in obtaining confirmation of
his account. We applied to the coroner of the district, who found no
inquest recorded in his books ; but he kindly inquired of a grandson of
the deceased lady, from whom he learnt that she had died in the summer
of 1880, and that there was no formal inquest. No doubt (as the
coroner suggests) Dr. Berry used the word " inquest " for the informal
consultation at which he assigned the cause of death.

(595) From Miss Eliza Mortlock, Tivoli Lodge, Clevedon, who does not
remember when it was that the account was written.

" At Wiesbaden we were acquainted with a clever good man, Professor
Ebenau, whose old sister kept his house, &c. He told us he had a friend
residing 40 or 50 miles off — likewise a professor — who was very poor, and
had a large family. On hearing that the wife was dying, Mr. E. went to
see them, and brought back their eldest boy, for whom a little bed was put-
up in Mr. E.'s room.

" One morning, about 10 days after, Mr. E. called and asked me, ' Do
you believe that at the moment of death, you may appear to one whom
you love ? ' I replied, 'Yes, I do.' ' Well,' he said, ' we shall see. I
have noted the day and the hour ; for last night after I went up to bed, the

VOL. II. 2 N

546 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

child said sweetly (in German), " Yes, dear mamma, I see you." To which
I replied, " No, dear boy, it is I, I am come to bed." " No, he said, " it is
dear mamma, she is standing there smiling at me," pointing to the side of
the bed.' On his next visit, Mr. Ebenau told us that he had received a
letter saying that at that time, and on that evening, the wife had breathed

her last- " ELIZA MORTLOCK."

[This event happened in the spring of 1854, and Miss Mortlock has
lost sight of Professor Ebenau ; but it will be seen that she herself was
informed of the vision before the death was known. The boy seems to have
been sufficiently awake at any rate to understand and reply to Professor
Ebenau's remark, and Miss Mortlock is sure that the Professor believed
him to have been awake. But he may have been in a state favourable to
subjective hallucination, from knowledge of his mother's critical condition.]

(596) From Mr. Wicks (a Temperance Missionary), 87, Southfields,
Leicester.

"July, 1884.

" In Devonport, in the year 1884, I was acquainted with a Mrs.
Flaherty, an Irish widow, who occupied two rooms in a house which
accommodated several poor families. She had three sons, the eldest of
whom, Garland, a lad of about 17, who was steward on board one of Her
Majesty's ships, was her main support. This lad had been ashore on leave,
and had bade his mother farewell to return to his duty. She, soon after
parting with him, set about cleaning the doorway of the house. Looking
up from this occupation, she saw him returning up the street, and she
exclaimed, ' Why, goodness ! he has lost the boat. Whatever will he do 1 '
She rose up and surveyed him as he approached her, identifying his face,
hair, figure, gait, dress, and even the bundle of clothes he had carried
away. She called out to him, but he made no answer, walked past her
into the house, and went up into her rooms. She followed, but finding
nobody there, she called out chidingly, ' Garland, don't play with me. Tell
me, why haven't you gone aboard ? ' Her excitement brought in her
neighbours, who asked what was the matter ; to which inquiry she
responded, ' Indeed, I don't know. By the Holy Mother, I never saw
Garland in my life if I didn't see him just now come in at the door and go
upstairs before me.' ' Are you sure, now, he is not hiding in some of your
rooms 1 ' They soon satisfied themselves by search that this was not the
case, and told Mrs. Flaherty she must have been mistaken. To this she
answered positively, ' Don't I know my own boy — my own Garland ? bless
him ! and didn't I see him come up the street, and come into this house *?
Yes, and up over the stairs : and didn't he pass me without speaking 1 the
likes of which he never did before at all, at all. Something must be the
matter with him.'

" In this she was right. It turned out that in trying to get from the boat
on to the ladder lying over the ship's side he missed his foothold, fell into
the sea, and was drowned. This happened at the very time his mother
saw his apparition.

" I had this story, as it is here given, from Mrs. Flaherty's own lips, and
have frequently since heard it from her second son, John Garland Flaherty,
who was my companion for over 10 years.

" WILLIAM WICKS."

v.] VISUAL CASES. 547

(597) From the late Miss Elizabeth Jacob, who wrote down the
account, some years ago, for Mrs. Saxby, of Mount Elton, Clevedon. The
date of the incident is now irrecoverable ; Mrs. Saxby, writing on
March 11, 1886, says that she thinks it "must have occurred full 20
years ago."

The narrative begins by describing how one John Miller, an old blind
man whom Miss Jacob and her sister, Mrs. Russell, used to visit in
London, died unexpectedly at a time when his son-in-law was seeking
employment in the country. " The second night after the death, Mrs.
Miller and her daughter had gone to bed, but they were unable to sleep
for thinking of him, when, to use her own words, ' I heard something
strike against the window, ma'am, and I started up and found that it was
someone throwing up stones against it. So I jumps up, throws my flannel
petticoat over my shoulders, and opens the window. " Who's there ?" says
I. "It is I, mother," says Jem, "come home." "Oh, Jem," says I, "father's
dead." Says he, " I knowed it, and that's why I come home." So, ma'am
I was struck all of a heap, as you may guess, and I whipped on my clothes
and let Jem in, and then he told us all how it was.' He had been in
Buckinghamshire, towards Oxford, and he was walking by a ploughed field
in a country place, when, looking up, he saw his father [in-law] coming
towards him. He was quite sure it was his father [in-law]. He felt startled,
but was just going up to speak to him when he passed away over the
ploughed field without turning, or speaking, or looking at him. Jem felt
so awe struck that he could neither move nor do anything, but he thought
directly that it was a sign that something was wrong, so he turned and
walked back to London as soon as he could, and very footsore and tired
he was when he arrived."

Mrs. Saxby tells us that Miss Jacob heard old Mrs. Miller relate this
incident a few days after Jem's return ; and adds, " They found that it
was exactly at the same hour that the old man died, that his son-in-law
saw him glide past him in the ploughed field."

[This case depends on the evidence of respectable, though uneducated,
witnesses ; and the fact of the son-in-law's return, and the reason he alleged
for it, are not matters on which memory would become untrustworthy in a
few days. At the same time, the exactitude of the coincidence may easily
have been exaggerated. As Mrs. Miller was cognisant of Jem's unexpected
return before he heard of the death, and must have heard of the vision
that caused his return in almost the same breath as he heard of the death,
her evidence may perhaps be reckoned as on a par with first-hand (Vol. I.,
p. 148).]

(598) The late General Campbell, of Gwalior House, Southgate, in-
formed us that a relative of his, Major Hasell, had seen the apparition of
a brother at the time of the latter's death, and that the only authority whom
he was at liberty to quote was a common relative of his own and of Major
Hasell's — General Orchard. At our request he wrote to General Orchard,
who replied as follows : —

" Woodville Gardens, Barnes, S.W., Surrey.

"May 17th, 1884.

" The event took place during June, 1849 (the precise date I cannot
say) ; it took place on his voyage home, on medical leave. Hasell (48th

VOL. II. 2 N 2

548 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Ben. N.I.) told me it was in the Red Sea that his brother died, on the way
to Suez. Hasell further stated that on seeing his brother's apparition
he looked at his watch, and noted down the date and time his brother
appeared to him, and by his calculations it was exactly the time intimated
as to his demise, which he afterwards received. The name of the ship I do
not know ; however, that can be easily ascertained from the India Office,
as well as the actual date and where he died. The particulars that I have
not been able to give have quite escaped my memory, although at the time
they must have been mentioned to me.

" Hasell was in India with his regiment, and his brother going to
England on medical leave at that time. u j ^y ORCHARD "

General Orchard writes to us on May 24, 1884 : —

" I cannot bring to mind when Major Hasell told me of the occurrence.

" The apparition appeared in the afternoon, but the hour has escaped
my memory. It showed itself to Major Hasell, and he told me it was
visible for a second or two, and then faded away. He made the calcula-
tion as to the time, which agreed with that of his brother's death."

General Campbell says that Major Hasell struck him " as being a
very straightforward, practical sort of man."

We learn from the India Office that Captain William Lowther Hasell,
attached to the 44th Bengal Native Infantry, died at Cairo, on his way
home, on the 13th June, 1849. The vessel in which he embarked from
India was the P. and O. steamship " Oriental," Captain Powell.

(599) The following narrative, received from an intimate friend of
Mr. Myers and the present writer, is third-hand, and is admitted only by
special exception (see Yol. I., p. 158, note).

" 1883.

" My grandfather, Sir J. Y., was drowned by the upsetting of a boat
in the Solent, in or about the year 1 830.

" On the day of his death Miss Manningham, a great friend and con-
nection of his, was at one of the Ancient Concerts in Hanover Square
Rooms. During the performance she fainted away, and when she came to,
declared that she had seen a corpse lying at her feet, and though the face
was turned away, she knew the figure to be that of my grandfather.
Communication in those days was not of course as easy as now, and her
fears were not verified till some days after the event.1 Such is the family
story, which I heard often from my father, and had verified by my mother
when last I saw her."

In answer to an inquiry, the narrator adds, " I have always under-
stood that my father heard it from Miss Manningham ; my mother heard
it from my father."

The following account of the same incident occurs in A Portion of the
Journal kept by T. Raikes, Esq., from 1831 to 1847, Vol. I., p. 131 :—

"Wednesday, 26th, December, 1832. — Captain recounted a curious

anecdote that happened in his own family. He told it in the following
words : — It is now about 15 months ago that Miss M., a connection of

1 The journey from Southampton to London only took one day at that time; but
Miss Manningham may not have been immediately informed of the news.

v.] VISUAL CASES. 549

my family, went with a party of friends to a concert at the Argyll Rooms.
She appeared there to be suddenly seized with indisposition, and though
she persisted for some time to struggle against what seemed a violent
nervous affection, it became at last so oppressive that they were obliged
to send for their carriage and conduct her home. She was for a long while
unwilling to say what was the cause of her indisposition ; but on being
more earnestly questioned, she at length confessed that she had,
immediately on arriving at the concert-room, been terrified by a horrible
vision which unceasingly presented itself to her sight. It seemed to her
as though a naked corpse was lying on the floor at her feet ; the features
of the face were partly covered by a cloth mantle, but enough was
apparent to convince her that the body was that of Sir J. Y. Every
effort was made by her friends at the time to tranquillise her mind by
representing the folly of allowing such delusions to prey upon her spirits,
and she thus retired to bed ; but on the following day the family received
the tidings of Sir J. Y. having been drowned in Southampton River that
very night by the oversetting of his boat, and the body was afterwards
found entangled in a boat-cloak. Here is an authentic case of second-sight,
and of very recent date."

We find from the Hampshire Telegraph that the fatal accident occurred
at about 4 p.m., on May 5, 1831.

It will be seen that the accounts present a discrepancy in the name
of the building where the vision was seen — the " Argyll Rooms,"
according to the older version, the " Hanover Square Rooms " according
to the later. We find from the advertisements of the Morning Post that
" the celebrated Russian Band " was that week giving daily concerts, at
3 p.m., at the Argyll Rooms; and from Crickley's Picture of London (1831),
p. 93, we learn that "the Argyll Rooms, Regent Street, burnt down in the
early part of last year, have been again restored to their former splendour.
They are devoted to concerts, balls, and exhibitions, and are much
frequented by persons of rank and fashion." It is therefore probable that
Miss Manningham was present at the afternoon concert at these Rooms.
The Hanover Square Rooms were also used for concerts at that time ; and
as the title " Argyll Rooms " has long ceased to suggest a high-class
concert-hall, one easily sees how it may have been unconsciously replaced
in the mind of our friend's parents by the more apparently suitable
appellation.

The newspaper-account shows that the bodies of Sir J. Y., and of two
friends who were drowned with him, were " completely enveloped in their
cloaks and greatcoats " ; and therefore the detail of the boat-cloak in the
vision, if correct, is interesting ; but as we do not know at what hand the
older account is given, it is impossible to rely on such a point.

(600) From Mr. James Cox, (mentioned above, p. 235).

" Admiralty House, Queenstown.

"March 18th, 1884.

"When I was serving in China in 1860, during the war, a military
officer, who was serving there at the same time, while crossing Talienwhau
Bay, was capsized and drowned. One of his brother officers informed
me that at the time of the accident he distinctly saw his apparition while
riding across the country.

550 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" I cannot now remember the names of these officers, as this happened
more than 20 years ago. « JAMES Cox."

In reply to the question whether he heard of the event immediately
after its occurrence, Mr. Cox says: — "March 25th 1884

" The fact of the officer in question having been capsized and drowned
was known to us all, I think, on the day the sad event happened ; as the
fleet was anchored in the Bay of Talienwhau, and the troops were
encamped on the shores of the Bay, so that the army and navy were in
constant communication. But the next day, I believe, while I was
returning from the camp, where I had been on a visit, the military officer
who had seen the apparition spoke to me of it."

We find from Mr. R. Swinhoe's A Narrative of the North China
Campaign in 1860, that the officer who was drowned, as described, was
Lieutenant H. L. G. Gordon, of the Madras Engineers. His death took
place on July llth, 1860.

Sir Peter Lumsden, K.C.B., who was in the boat with Gordon, and
Colonel W. H. Edgcome, R.E., who was in the Madras Engineers in China
at the time, tell us that they never heard of the apparition.

[Mr. Cox is a careful informant ; and the fact that he was on the spot,
and heard of the incident immediately on its occurrence, seems to justify
an exception to the rule of not admitting accounts from persons who had
only a slight acquaintance with the original witness.]

(601) Mr. F. L. Brine, Finsbury Distillery, E.G., sent us a letter from
his sister, Mrs. F., containing the following passage : —

"February 29th, 1884.

" I remember, as if it were only yesterday, staying at the Miltons. It
was Mr. Milton's custom to go into the cellar, to turn the gas off at the
meter. When he came up he was looking unusually pale, and he said,
' Where is the scoundrel ? ' Of course it frightened us, as we thought he
meant a burglar ; and he would not believe, for some time, that his son,
Harry, was not having a game with him ; as he saw him quite plainly in
the cellar. A few weeks after, they had a letter from the captain of the
ship, to say he died in Hobart Town Hospital, on the very night he
appeared to his father. « g. j\"

[Mrs. F. dislikes the subject, and we can obtain no further details from
her. We have written to Hobart Town, to obtain a certificate of the
death, but have not received it in time for insertion here.]

(602) From an article in Church Bells for March 20th, 1885, by the
Rev. J. Foxley, Vicar of Market Weighton, Yorkshire.

" There is now living in the parish where we write — she was at church
last Sunday — a widow now in her 78th year, but in full possession of all
her faculties, who has more than once told us, with all the fulness
of detail, and subject to all the cross-questioning which we could devise,
how she was at service some miles from home during her father's last
illness, and that one Thursday she felt unable to go on with her work, and
after a while, about 1 o'clock, saw a vision of her father ; that it turned
out afterwards that her father died at that very time, and that just before
his death he had been speaking of her ; that a letter sent to inform her
of his being worse failed to reach her ; and that though she knew he was

v.] VISUAL CASES. 551

ill, she was not aware that he was in immediate danger ; but that she was
so impressed with her vision that she set off home the Saturday following,
and learnt1 on the way that her father was dead, and that his funeral was
to take place that very day, so that she arrived only just in time. We
have verified one subordinate part of the above narrative ; for by
reference to the parish register we find that the burial took place on the
31st of May, 1823 ; and as the Sunday letter for that year was E, which is
the letter for the 1st of June, the burial turns out to have been, as stated,
on a Saturday. Our informant was then, as shown by the register of her
baptism, 25 years old."

In sending the above, Mr. Foxley writes, October 24th, 1884 : —
" The enclosed cutting from Church Bells has the advantage of having
been read over to Mrs. Pollard, and accepted by her as a faithful state-
ment of what occurred to her. She was buried here, February 14th, 1884.
She could read well. The ' 1 o'clock ' mentioned was in the day-time. I
recollect her mentioning dinner-time. The place was some out-building,
I think a summer-house, but of that I am not certain. She always
told the story under the impression that she was wide awake."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Foxley adds : —

" I cannot recollect whether she said she mentioned the apparition to
anyone before the news of the death arrived. But she told me that the
apparition was one cause, if not the cause, of her asking leave to go home
to see her father. I cannot say in whose service she was.

" All I can add is, that I cross-questioned Mrs. Pollard repeatedly, in
every way I could think of, and that I could not shake her story. But
then she may have told it so many times that it had become truth to her,
like George the Fourth's presence at the battle of Waterloo."

[Here the impression seems io have been so vivid as to prompt a very
decided line of action. But on the other hand, the percipient was probably
in anxiety as to her father's condition, which diminishes the improbability
that her hallucination was purely subjective.]

(603) From Mr. Norris, (Barrister), Dalkey, Ireland. The account
was written down before 1868 : we received it in 1882.

"In or about 1850, and for some years previous and subsequent, there
lived at Hampton Court, near Douglas, Isle of Man, a gentleman named
Abbott with a family, consisting of Mrs. Abbott, five daughters, and one
son. Mr. Abbott being fond of the sea, kept a small yacht, but particu-
larly desired his son never to go out in it without his permission. About
the time above mentioned, while he was himself absent in Dublin, his son ob-
tained his mother's permission, and with two young companions crossed the
Channel to Kirkcudbright on the opposite Scottish shore. On Mr. Abbott's
return, he was annoyed to find the boys had gone out without taking a
sailor with them, and this annoyance was not lessened by the receipt of a
letter saying they could not return until they received a remittance. Mrv
Abbott at once went into Douglas, a distance of four or five miles, and
posted a letter to his son with the necessary enclosure. He had scarcely
done so when, turning round, he saw his son at the opposite side of the

1 At a wayside inn, now a cottage, at Arras, on the Beverley-road, about three miles
from Market Weighton, but in the parish. — J. F.

552 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

narrow street, looking at him with a very sorrowful expression. Just at that
moment he was too much annoyed to speak to him, so he went home and
told Mrs. Abbott that he had had all his trouble for nothing as John was
in Douglas. He added that he was too much annoyed to take any notice
of him, but he supposed he would be in for dinner. In vain they waited.
At the very time, his father (from whose lips I had the story) saw him in
Douglas he was drowned in Kirkcudbright Bay by the upsetting of his
boat. This was about noon or a little earlier. I know not whether Mr.
Abbott be now alive, nor can I give the address of any of his family ; but
he told me the story as I have stated it, with his own lips.

"THOMAS J. NORRIS."

Mrs. Tandy, a daughter of Mr. Norris, writes to us from 1, Tempe"
Terrace, Dalkey, Ireland, that she was 14 at the time of this occurrence,
and perfectly remembers hearing Mr. Abbott's account of it. She then
narrates it just as it is given above.

[We have failed to find any newspaper-account of this accident ; and
the death was not registered — registration in those days not being com-
pulsory. But we learn from the collector of H.M. Customs at Douglas,
and from the sexton at Kirkcudbright, that several residents at these
places remember the event.]

(604) From the Rev. R. L. Loughborough, Pirton Vicarage, Hitchin.

"January 25th, 1884.

" I was visiting a poor woman, Mrs. Abbiss, far gone in consumption,
and wishing to draw her thoughts to the certainty of approaching death,
I asked her certain questions about her relations and her mother. I had
no sooner named her mother than she exclaimed, ' Ah, sir, there was a
strange thing happened at the time of mother's death ; but I'm thinking
you would hardly believe me if I were to tell it ye.' ' I do not know,' I
said, ' I hear of too many strange things to be much surprised at what
you could tell me, or to doubt the truth of what you may say.' 'Well,
sir, the truth of it was this. I was but a girl at the time, arid mother
being very ill, suffering from the same complaint as mine, we had a
woman to help me. Mother kept her bed. And one morning when we
had made her comfortable and given her her breakfast, we thought she
seemed a little better, and came down stairs to have our breakfast ; but,
sir, we hadn't sat very long before the door opened, and in came father
looking all skeered like, and sat himself down in that very chair where
you are now sitting. " Oh, father," I said, " how you fritted me, what's
the matter ? " " How's mother 1 " he said. " Why, we gave her her
breakfast, and she seemed quite comfortable like when we left her not
many minutes since." " Then run and see how she is now." I went up,
and would you believe it, sir, we found mother was dead 1 When I asked
father what made him come up in that frightened way, he said, " Why, I

was hoeing in Mr. W.'s field, and just as S clock was striking 9, I

see your mother standing at the end of my hoe. I was struck all of a
heap like, and threw down my hoe, and ran home as fast as I could." '

" The father's name was John Wilson. You may place the fullest
reliance on the narrative, as my impression is still most vivid as to the
whole circumstance of the relation. The poor woman was well known to me
from my frequent visits. She was too simple-minded to romance upon

v.] VISUAL CASES. 553

the matter, and there was a sort of dramatic earnestness in her manner as
she told me, which convinced me that she realised again the strange look
of her father when he returned to inquire about his wife.

" R. LINDSAY LOUGHBOROUGH."

Mr. Loughborough has ascertained from the Register that Mrs. Wil-
son died in January, 1850, aged 41 ; her husband in January, 1853,
aged 48 ; and Mrs. Abbiss in September, 1856, aged 32. He thinks it
most probable that Mrs. Abbiss gave him the account in the early summer
of 1856. She must have been at least 25 (though she says " but a girl")
at the time of the incident.

[The evidence is of the same class as in case 597, Mrs. Abbiss having
been a witness of the unusual demeanour of her father, due to the
vision — though she did not actually hear the vision described — before the
fact of the death was known to him.]

(605) From Mrs. Laurie, Fiesole, Bathwick Hill, Bath. We owe this
case, in the first instance, to Mr. G. J. Romanes, F.R.S., who sent us a
letter containing an account which Mrs. Laurie had dictated in June,
1883 ; but the following account, dictated in 1885 to Mr. L. G. Fry, of
Goldney House, Clifton, is a little fuller.

" General Kennett was travelling home to his wife, who was staying
in some part of India, from Bombay, and was intending to break the
journey for a week at my husband's (Mr. Laurie) house at Baroda. He
declined to sleep in the house, saying that he would have his tent pitched
near, and preferred it, as cooler. Next morning, however, he came in in a
very agitated state, saying that he hoped we would excuse him, and that
he had ordered his tent to be struck, as he intended to resume his journey
immediately When we asked what was the matter, he replied that his
wife had appeared to him, saying that if he did not return home im-
mediately he would never see her alive. I suggested that it was a
dream, but he said ' No,' he had really seen her. My husband said 'Well,
General, I am sorry you're going, I hope you'll find her quite well.'
General Kennett started immediately, and on arriving home he wrote to
us stating that she was dead, and that he found her in the dress in which
he had seen her in his tent She died a few minutes before his arrival, and
therefore four or five days after the vision — as he had a long distance to
travel. When he had left his wife, she appeared in good health, and he
had no message to say she was ill. The fact that he found her dressed
would seem to suggest that she died very suddenly.

" CAROLINE EMMA LAURIE."

General Kennett and Mr. Laurie are both deceased.

[This is, of course, a very inconclusive case ; for the dress may probably
have been a familiar one ; and if the death was so sudden that no
premonitory symptoms had been felt four or five days before, therq.
would be no strong reason for regarding the vision as telepathic rather
than as a purely subjective hallucination. But the death was not by an
accident — it at any rate took place from some morbid physical cause ;
and it must not be forgotten that the approach of death from such a
cause may conceivably be discerned in a way which is out of the range
of consciousness as we understand it. (See Vol. I., p. 231.) ]

554 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

(606) The following letter was published in the Banner of Light of
January, 1878. We wrote to make inquiries of the writer, Mr. Alwis,
but have since been informed by the Colonial Office that he died in 1878.

"Colombo, Ceylon.

"It was a fine, clear evening, many years ago, a day after I had
gone to Negombo, to act for Mr. John Selby as District Judge of that
place, that I joined that gentleman at a game of cricket. We finished
our game, and were, in the dusk of the evening, coming to the Govern-
ment House, where we all lived, when Mr. Selby, who was behind us,
came rushing past us, and beckoned me to come fast. He was rather
excited, and desired me to be good enough to consult my watch and tell
him the time. I did so. He then sat down at my writing-table, took a
sheet of note-paper, and wrote down, 'My wife died 13 minutes to 6 o'clock'
(month, &c., which I forget). This slip of paper he put into an envelope,
sealed it, and got me and another gentleman then present to put our
signatures to the fact therein stated. We did so. And he then explained
to us that his wife, who had been long ill in England, had appeared to
him at the time above indicated, under the shadow of the big banian, and
that he had not the slightest doubt that she had died at that hour, and
that it was her spirit 1 which he had seen. In consequence of this per-
suasion, Mr. Selby, who was to leave Ceylon in a few days for England,
postponed his trip for a short time. And when the mail had arrived, a
month or more after the date above given, he showed me his private
letters, and they fully confirmed the prediction of his wife's death, within
a few hours, as I remember, of the time he stated he had seen his wife
under the tree. "JAMES ALWIS."

Mr. S. C. Obeyesekere writes to us from Colombo, on July 18, 1885: —

" You are correctly informed as to my being a son-in-law of the late
Hon. James Alwis. On inquiry from Mrs. Alwis and several of his
friends, I learn that the extract from the report appearing in the Banner
of Light forwarded to me is substantially correct, and accords with their
recollection of Mr. Alwis' account to them of the incident referred to in it.

" Both Mr. John Selby and his brother, Henry Collingwood, who was
Queen's Advocate of Ceylon, are dead, and I do not know whether there
are any relations of theirs in the Island, except a son-in-law of Thos. H.
C. Selby — Mr. Frank Byrde, of Avissawelle. Mrs. Selby [i.e., Mrs. H. C.
Selby]. I believe, is still alive at Bath, in England, and you might get some
information from her about what you refer to. The other gentleman
who, with Mr. Alwis, witnessed Mr. Selby's memoranda, I am informed,
was a Mr. Macartney, of the Police, who is also dead.

" Mr. Alwis acted for Mr. Selby as District Judge of Negombo from
13th April to 24th May, 1863. [We have received confirmation of this
fact from the Colonial Office.]

" I have not succeeded in tracing out any written memoranda of the
event at the time of Mr. Alwis ; if I do succeed in tracing them out, I
shall with pleasure forward you their copy. « g Q OBEYESEKERE."

1 As regards this word, which occurs again in the introductory paragraph to the fol-
lowing case, see p. 48, note.

v.] VISUAL CASES. 555

Mrs. H. C. Selby writes to us, from 2, Vale View, London Road, Bath,
on May 28, 1886 :—

" We have heard of the circumstances to which you refer, with regard
to Mr. John Selby ; but not having seen him when he was in England,
after the death of his wife, we are unable to give you any information."

Mr. Frank Byrdehas kindly written to us, saying that the account given
" substantially agrees " with what he had heard before, but that he has no
written record of the incident. He has also given us the means of tracing
Mrs. John Selby's death, which took place, as the Register shows, on
May 14, 1864. The month, it will be seen, agrees with the above evidence ;
but the year there given is 1863. The mistake, if it be one, probabiy
occurs in some record to which Mr. Obeyesekere and the officials of the
Colonial Office both had access ; but possibly Mr. Alwis acted as sub-
stitute for Mr. J. Selby more than once.

(607) The following case was reported by the late Serjeant Cox to the
Psychological Society, in February, 1879, on the authority of Surgeon
Harris, of the Royal Artillery ; who, with two of his daughters (one of
whom became Serjeant Cox's wife), was a witness of the occurrence.
The narrative has been already published in a book called Spirits before our
Eyes, by W. H. Harrison, pp. 64-5.

" A party of children, sons and daughters of the officers of Artillery
stationed at Woolwich, were playing in the garden. Suddenly a little
girl screamed, and stood staring with an aspect of terror at a willow tree
there. Her companions gathered round, asking what ailed her. ' Oh ! '
she said, ' there — there. Don't you see. There's papa lying on the ground,
and the blood running from a big wound.' All assured her that they could
see nothing of the kind. But she persisted, describing the wound and the
position of the body, still expressing her surprise that they did not see
what she saw so plainly. Two of her companions were daughters of my
informant (one of the surgeons of the regiment), whose house adjoined the
garden. They called their father, who at once came to the spot. He
found the child in a state of extreme terror and agony, took her into his
house, assuring her that it was only a ' fancy,' and having given her resto-
ratives, sent her home. The incident was treated by all as what the doctor
had called it, and no more was thought of it. News from India, where
the child's father was stationed, was in those days slow in coming. But
the arrival of the mail in due course brought the information that the
father of the child had been killed by a shot, and died under a tree.
Making allowance for difference in the counting of time, it was found to
have been about the moment when the daughter had the vision at
Woolwich."

[If here, as in so many other of the second-hand cases, the details
and the alleged accuracy of the coincidence must be doubted, the main
fact of a striking coincidence of the sort alleged may still be reasonably
accepted as probable.]

I have more than once spoken of nautical evidence as likely to
be coloured by superstition, or modified and exaggerated in the way
natural to oft-repeated " yarns." But it may be reasonably supposed
that the first-hand witnesses in the two following cases really had

556 SUPPLEMENT, [CHAP.

some such experience as is described, and that the coincidence was
not a pure invention.

(608 and 609) From Mr. William Dunlop, Engineer, care of Messrs.
Windsor, Bedlock, and Co., Bangkok, Siam.

"Feb. 17th, 1883.

" A relation of mine, named Richard Jones, was apprentice pilot in the
Mersey. One day he boarded an inward bound vessel, and took charge.
The captain of the vessel was sick, and the mate had command ; he seemed
to be very low-spirited, and would hardly answer my cousin when he spoke
to him. They walked the deck in silence for a long time, when at last the
mate suddenly asked my cousin what sort of weather they had had about
the coast for the last month or so. My cousin said the weather had
been very bad. The mate then asked if my cousin knew anything about a
certain brig ; he answered that he did, but that he wished to know why
the question was put. The mate then said : ' My brother was captain of
that vessel, and I'm uneasy about him, because, as we were coming down
the Mediterranean this trip, I saw my brother aboard of this craft. At
8 bells (noon) I went below to dinner ; when I came on deck again I took
a look up to windward to see what the weather was like, and, standing
close against the bulwarks I saw my brother. I went over to him, but as
I got close to him he disappeared. I turned round and saw him on the
other side of the deck ; I went towards him with my arms stretched out ;
when I got near him I made a sudden clasp at him, but he disappeared
again.' My cousin asked the mate to give him the date of this appearance ;
the mate did so, and my cousin answered, ' On that day, and as near as I
can judge, at the same hour, your brother's brig was lost with all hands.' "

[We discovered a recent address of Mr. (now Captain) Richard Jones ;
but he had left, and we have been unable to trace him.]

"From the 7th of October, 1867, till the 14th April, 1871, I was
shipmate with Mr. F. L. Murphy, aboard the ss. ' Riga,' of Leith, of
which vessel he was second officer. Mr. Murphy, in spite of his name, was
an Englishman ; he belonged to the middle class, was very well educated,
but very superstitious. Never mind that, he was as truthful as man could
be, hated lies and liars, and no man could be braver. His death showed
what manner of man he was, for when the ss. ' Hong Kong ' was lost in
the Red Sea about 8 years ago, he gave his place in the boat to
another man and stayed on the wreck, well knowing that it was death
to do so. The other man had a family, Murphy had none, so he sacrificed
himself.

"I think it was somewhere about the year 1863, that Murphy was
before the mast on board the ' Sultana ' of South Shields, on the run home
from Bombay to England. Off the Cape of Good Hope they were running
with dirty weather, and towards nightfall it looked very nasty, so the
captain determined to heave to. At 8 bells it was all hands to close
reef the main topsail. Now when a man is bearing a hand to reef a main
topsail, with something like a gale of wind blowing, he has not much
chance to fall a-dreaming. If you have been to sea you know what it is ;
if you have not, just fancy yourself some 70 or 80 feet up in the air, swung
from port to starboard, from starboard to port like a stone in a sling, with

v.] VISUAL CASES, 557

the great sail slatting and thundering below you. Well, Murphy was aloft
fisting the sail, when he happened to look forward, and saw someone on
the fore topsail yard. He shouted to the man next him, ' Who's that on
the fore topsail yard 1 ' His mate gave a look forward and answered,
' Why, there's no one there, we're all on the yard here.' Murphy looked
along the main topsail yard and counted the hands ; sure enough they
were all there. He looked forward again, and saw that the man on the
fore topsail yard was his cousin Stevens, who was in England at the time.
When the ship was brought to the wind, Murphy, before turning in,
entered in his private log the date and hour of the apparition.

" On arriving in England he found that his cousin had died on the
same day he appeared aboard the ' Sultana,' but between the hour of his
death and the hour of the apparition, there was a difference for which the
longitude did not account."

[The last sentence may be taken as in some measure an indication of
accuracy in the narrative.]

(610) From Mr. Francis Dart Fenton, formerly in the native depart-
ment of the Government, Auckland, New Zealand. He gave the account
in writing to his friend, Captain J. H. Crosse, of Monkstown, Cork, from
whom we received it. In 1852, when the incident occurred, Mr.
Fenton was " engaged in forming a settlement on the banks of the
Waikato."

"March 25th, 1860.

" Two sawyers, Frank Philps and Jack Mulholland, were engaged
cutting timber for the Rev. R. Maunsell, at the mouth of the Awaroa
creek, a very lonely place, a vast swamp, no people within miles of them.
As usual they had a Maori with them to assist in felling trees. He came
from Tihorewam, a village on the other side of the river about 6 miles off.
As Frank and the native were cross-cutting a tree, the native stopped
suddenly and said, ' What are you come for 1 ' looking in the direction of
Frank. Frank replied, ' What do you mean 1 ' He said, ' I am not speaking
to you ; I am speaking to my brother.' Frank said, ' Where is he 1 ' The
native replied, ' Behind you. What do you want 1 ' (to the other Maori).
Frank looked round and saw nobody ; the native no longer saw anyone,
but laid down the saw and said, ' I shall go across the river ; my brother
is dead.' Frank laughed at him and reminded him that he had left him
quite well on Sunday (five days before), and there had been no communi-
cation since. The Maori spoke no more, but got into his canoe and pulled
across. When he arrived at the landing-place, he met people coming to
fetch him. His brother had just died ; I knew him well."

In answer to inquiries as to his authority for this narrative, Mr.
Fenton writes to us :

"December 18th, 1883.

" I knew all the parties concerned well, and it is quite true, valeat
quantum, as the lawyers say. Incidents of this sort are not infrequent
among the Maoris.

"F. D. FENTON,

" Late Chief Judge, Native Law Court of New Zealand."
This case, if faithfully reported, is an interesting example,

558 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

vouched for by an educated European, of telepathy occurring among
an uncivilised people.

§ 5. I will conclude this chapter with three cases, which are
respectively one, two, and three centuries old, but of which the first
and second, at any rate, may fairly receive an evidential number.

(611) From the Life of Mrs. Mary Fletcher, by Henry Moore (1818),
Yol. I., pp. 208-209 — an extract from Mrs. Fletcher's diary.

" October, 1784. — As I was retired this morning at my 10 o'clock
hour, I was called down to Mary G. She gave me a strange account
which I shall insert as she related it : — A short time ago, she said, she
was one day going out to work in the fields, but thought she would first
go upstairs to prayer. While on her knees, praising God for the care He
had taken of her children, she was amazed to see her eldest son, about 21
years of age, standing before her ! She started up — but thought, ' Maybe
it is the enemy to affright me from prayer.' Casting her eyes up again to
the same spot, she still saw him there ; on which she ran down into the
kitchen, calling on the name of the Lord. Still, wherever she looked,
she saw him standing before her, pale, and as if covered with dirt. Con-
cluding from this that he was killed, she ran to her mother, who, on
hearing the account, went directly to the pit, determined to have him home
if alive. On her drawing near the pit, she heard a great tumult ; for the
earth had fallen in on him and two other men, and the people were
striving to dig them out. At length he was got up alive and well, and
came home to his mother pale and dirty, just as she had seen him ! She
then fell on her knees, and began praising that God who hears and
answers prayer."

(612) From The World of Spirits, by R. Baxter (1691), pp. 147-151.
Abridgment of a letter to Baxter from Mr. Thomas Tilson, Minister of
Aylesworth, in Kent.1

"July 6th, 1691.

" Mary, the wife of John Goffe, of Rochester, being afflicted with a long
illness, removed to her father's house at West Mulling, which was about 9
miles distant from her own ; there she died, June 4th, 1691.

" The day before her departure she grew impatiently desirous to see
her two children, whom she had left at home, to the care of a nurse. She
prayed her husband to hire a horse, for she must go home to die with her
children.

" Between 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning she fell into a trance. One
widow Turner, who watched with her that night, says that her eyes were
open and fixed, and her jaw fallen ; she put her hand on her mouth and
nostrils, but could perceive no breath ; she thought her to be in a fit, and
doubted whether she was alive or dead. The next day this dying woman
told her mother that she had been at home with her children. ' That is

This letter, _which must be presumed to be correctly quoted, cannot be impugned

' of the matters
Historical Essay

on the ground of Baxter's own credulity and prejudice in respect of many of the matters
dealt with in his book ; as to which see Hutchinson's excellent remarks,

concerning Witchcraft (London, 1720), pp. 79-101.

v.] VISUAL CASES. 559

impossible,' said the mother, ' for you have been here in bed all the while.'
' Yes,' replied the other, ' but I was with them last night while I was
asleep.'

" The nurse at Rochester, widow Alexander by name, affirms and says
she will take her oath of it, before a magistrate, and receive the sacrament
upon it, that a little before 2 o'clock that morning she saw the likeness of
the said Mary Goffe come out of the next chamber (where the elder child lay
in a bed by itself, the door being left open), and stood by her bedside for
about a quarter of an hour ; the younger child was there lying by her ; her
eyes moved, and her mouth went, but she said nothing. The nurse, more-
over, says that she was perfectly awake ; it was then daylight, being one
of the longest days in the year. She sat up in her bed, and looked
steadfastly upon the apparition ; at that time she heard the bridge clock
strike 2, and a while after said, ' In the name of the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, what art thou ? ' Thereupon the appearance removed and
went away ; she slipped on her clothes and followed, but what became
of it she cannot tell. Then, and not before, she began to be grievously
affrighted, and went out of doors, and walked upon the wharf (the house
is just by the river-side) for some hours, only going in now and then to
look at the children. At 5 o'clock she went to a neighbour's and knocked
at the door, but they would not rise ; at 6 she went again, then they rose
and let her in. She related to them all that had passed ; they would
persuade her she was mistaken, or dreamt ; but she confidently affirmed,
' If ever I saw her in all my life, I saw her this night.'

" One of those to whom she made the relation (Mary, the wife of J.
Sweet) had a messenger who came from Mulling that forenoon, to let her
know her neighbour Goffe was dying, and desired to speak with her ; she
went over the same day, and found her just departing. The mother,
amongst other discourses, related to her how much her daughter had
longed to see her children, and said she had seen them. This brought to
Mrs. Sweet's mind what the nurse had told her that morning ; for, till
then, she had not thought fit to mention it, but disguised it rather, as the
woman's disturbed imagination.

" The substance of this I had related to me by John Carpenter, the
father of the deceased, the next day after the burial — July 2. I fully
discoursed the matter with the nurse and two neighbours, to whose house
she went that morning.

" Two days after, I had it from the mother, the minister that was with
her in the evening, and the woman who sat up with her last that night.
They all agree in the same story, and every one helps to strengthen the
other's testimony.

" They all appear to be sober, intelligent persons, far enough off from
designing to impose a cheat upon the world, or to manage a lie ; and what
temptation they should lie under for so doing I cannot conceive.

"THOMAS TlLSON."

[This case may possibly have been reciprocal ; but proof is lacking that
the dying woman's sense of having seen her children was anything but
purely subjective.1 See p. ] 56.]

1 Mr. Tilson's case finds a curiously close parallel in the following narrative, abridged
from the words of the late Mrs. Charles Fox, of Trebah, Falmputh, (a lady well known
to Mr. Myers,) who had heard the account from one of the percipients. The Fox family

560 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

Theodore A. D'Aubigne", in his Histoire Universelle (1616-20), Vol. II.,
p. 143, relates the following incident, as told to him privately by the King
of Navarre.

"Le Roi estant en Avignon, le 23 Decembre, 1574, y mourut Charles,
Cardinal de Lorraine. . . . J'afferme sur la parole du Roi le second
prodige [the first was a violent storm]. . . . c'est que la Roine
[Catherine di Medici] s'estait mise au lit de meilleure heure que de cous-
tume, aiant a son coucher entr' autres personnes de marque le Roi de
Navarre, FArchevesque de Lyon, les Dames de Rets, de Lignerolles et de
Saunes, deux desquelles ont confirm^ ce discours ; comme elle estait presse'e
de donner le bon soir, elle se jetta d'un tressaut sur son chenet, met les
mains audevant de son visage, et avec un cri violent appella a son secours
ceux qui 1'assistoient, leur voulant monstrer au pied du lit le Cardinal, qui
lui tendoit la main, elle s'escriant plusieurs fois, ' Monsieur le Cardinal, je
n'ai que faire avec vous ' ; le Roi de Navarre envoie au mesme temps un de
ses gentils hommes au logis du Cardinal, qui rapporta comment il avoit
expire" au mesme point."

[The Queen was probably aware that the Cardinal's death, of which
she had been very desirous, was imminent.]

was one in which such a tradition as this would be likely to be soberly preserved ; but the
youth of the original witness, and the loss of the contemporary records, make it impossible
to reckon the case as evidence.

" In 1739 Mrs. Birkbeck, wife of William Birkbeck, banker, of Settle, and a member
of the Society of Friends, was taken ill and died at Cockermouth, while returning from a
journey to Scotland, which she had undertaken alone — her husband and three children,
aged seven, five, and four years respectively, remaining at Settle. The friends at whose
house the death occurred made notes of every circumstance attending Mrs. Birkbeck's last
hours, so that the accuracy of the several statements as to time as well as place was beyond
the doubtfulness of man's memory, or of any even unconscious attempt to bring them into
agreement with each other.

" One morning, between 7 and 8 o'clock, the relation to whom the care of the children
of Settle had been entrusted, and who kept a minute journal of all that concerned them,
went into their bedroom as usual, and found them all sitting up in their beds in great
excitement and delight. ' Mamma has been here ! ' they cried, and the little one said,
' She called, " Come Esther ! " ' Nothing could make them doubt the fact, and it was
carefully noted down, to entertain the mother on her return home. That same morning,
as their mother lay on her dying bed at Cockermouth, she said, ' I should be ready to go
if I could but see my children. ' She then closed her eyes, to reopen them, as they thought,
no more. But after 10 minutes of perfect stillness she looked up brightly and said, ' I am
ready now ; I have been with my children ' ; and then at once peacefully passed away.
When the notes taken at the two places were compared, the day, hour, and minutes were
the same.

" One of the three children was my grandmother, n6e Sarah Birkbeck, afterwards the
wife of Dr. Fell, of Ulverston. From her lips I heard the above almost literally as I
have repeated it. The eldest was Morris Birkbeck, afterwards of Guildford. Both these
lived to old age, and retained to the last so solemn and reverential a remembrance of the
circumstance that they rarely would speak of it. Esther, the youngest, died soon after.
Her brother and sister heard the child say that her mother called her, but could not speak
with any certainty of having themselves heard the words, nor were sensible of more than
their mother's standing there and looking on them. "

VI.]

CHAPTER VI.

AUDITORY AND TACTILE CASES.

§ 1. MOST of the following cases are on first-hand testimony ;
but some of them are remote in date ; in some a certain amount
of anxiety may have predisposed the percipient to hallucination ;
and in others the degree of exactitude in the coincidence is not
certainly established. I will give first a group where the impression
was of distinct words.

(613) From Mr. M. P. Stephenson, 8, Southfield Road, Gotham,
Bristol.

"January 31st, 1884.

" On or about the llth November, 1882, I was awakened by two or
three knocks at my bedroom door,1 and a voice called, ' Pa ! pa ! ' I
called out, ' Who's there ? ' but no answer came. (I was sleeping alone,
as my wife was ill, and slept in an adjoining room with a daughter.) At
breakfast I inquired if either of them had called me ; they had not done
so. ' Then,' said I ' someone else did, and I fear we shall have bad news
from New Zealand,' where our two sons were living.

" I awaited anxiously the arrival of the next mail, which came in the
middle of December, and then we had what I believed to be the solving
of the mystery. Our eldest son, on the 21st October, 1882, was going to
see his son at Palmerston, a town some 60 or 70 miles from Dunedin, and
midway the train got off the line ; some carriages were smashed. He was
severely shaken, but felt nothing seriously the matter until two days after
the mishap, on his return home. He was taken with cold shivering, and
the doctors said they were afraid of erysipelas and blood-poisoning setting
in. Such was the account of the case in our first letter. We looked
with great concern for the next mail which was due on the 2nd January,
1883, although in my own mind I seemed sure he was dead ; and on
Christmas Day I said to a friend, who dined with us, that I believed he
had been in his grave six weeks, which was the fact. The news came that,
our son died on the llth of November and was buried on the 14th.

" M. P. STEPHENSON."

1 Where the rousing from sleep is as sudden as this, an impression which follows it
may perhaps fairly be reckoned a waking experience.

VOL. II. 2 0

562 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

We find from the obituary of the Bristol Mercury and Daily Post that
Mr. Stephenson's son died in New Zealand on November 11, 1882.

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Stephenson adds : —

" I have been very sorry that I did not make a note of the exact time
of the voice and raps at my bedroom door. I have been trying to
calculate it exactly, but my experience of memory is that in old age we
can recollect things that occurred 50 or 60 years ago more distinctly than
events which happened two or three months back. My firm impression is
that what I heard was about 6 o'clock in the morning of the llth
November, and his death took place at 11 or 12 o'clock on the llth, New
Zealand time. I have searched for the letter which stated the time, but
have not been able to find it."

[If Mr. Stephenson is right as to the day of his experience, and as to
the hour of the death, the sounds followed the death by 5 or 6 hours. In
an interview with Mr. Podmore, he stated that both his wife and daughter
clearly remember the incident ; but on religious grounds they decline to
give written testimony.]

(614) From Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, of New Berlin, ChenangoCo., New

York- " March, 1884.

" During the Civil War in America a young man of the name of
George Roberts enlisted on the Union side. He was with those troops
when Port Hudson, Louisiana, was attacked, and in an assault made upon
that place on Sunday, June 14th, 1863, he was killed. He fell about 10
o'clock that morning.

" His parents, living in Chenango Co., State of New York, knew that
he was in the neighbourhood of Port Hudson, and that there might be a
battle some time, but nothing more.

" On Sunday, June 14th, 1863, Mrs. Roberts was getting ready for
church, and the first bell that rings a quarter before 10 had just ceased,
when Mrs. R. heard George's voice calling to her, ' Mother ! Mother ! '
It was perfectly distinct and clear, as though in the room. The fright
and conviction of her son's death affected her so much that she
became ill.

" Shortly after this, came the news of the death of George before Port
Hudson, at the very hour that his mother heard his voice in her room
calling her.

"These statements are correct, as they occurred, June 14th, 1863.

"JONATHAN ROBERTS.
" MARTHA ROBERTS."

The Rev. R. Whittingham, of Pikesville, Maryland, a Corresponding
Member of the S.P.R., who procured this narrative for us, vouches for
Mr. and Mrs. Roberts as " extremely respectable, worthy, well-to-do
people " ; and says : —

" I know Mr. Roberts said that his son was shot just at 10 o'clock ;
for he spoke to me of his having a strange feeling of someone being behind
him in the church tower as he was ringing the first bell at, or for, 10
o'clock, and he said that was the hour that George was shot. This being

vi.] AUDITORY AND TACTILE CASES. 563

only a feeling, or impression, on his part, I did not think it worth mention-
ing, as it could be easily imagined afterward ; but it fixed the time of
George's death on my memory. That was the solitary instance of halluci-
nation that they have ever experienced. They are by no means imagi-
native or credulous in temperament or habit."

[If the coincidence here was as close as is alleged, the case is of some
weight, even though the mother's mind may have been to some extent pre-
occupied with the thought of her son.]

(615) Extract from a paragraph in the Times of Sept. 11, 1876, which
recorded the funeral, at Aleppo, of Mr. George Smith, the eminent
Assyriologist.

" A most striking coincidence may here be mentioned without com-
ment. A young German Assyriologist of the highest promise, Dr.
Friedrich Delitzsch, is now, for the second time, in this country, having
been sent, as on his former visit, by the King of Saxony to study the
arrow-headed inscriptions in the British Museum. During his former stay
here last year, which was noticed at the time in our columns, Dr. Delitzsch
and Mr. George Smith naturally became fast friends, and the Leipzig
savant and his brother Hermann were chosen by Mr. Smith to introduce to
German readers his Chaldean Account of Genesis, which has accordingly
just been published at Leipzig under their joint editorship.

" On the 1 9th ult., the day of Mr. George Smith's death, Dr. Delitzsch
was on his way to the house of Mr. William St. Chad Boscawen, who is
also a rising Assyriologist. Mr. Boscawen resides in Kentish Town, and
in passing the end of Crogsland Road, in which Mr. George Smith lived,
and within about a stone's throw of the house, his German friend said he
suddenly heard a most piercing cry, which thrilled him to the marrow,
' Herr Dr. Delitzsch.' The time — for as soon as he got over the shock he
looked at his watch — was between 6.45 and 7 p.m., and Mr. Parsons gives
the hour of Mr. Smith's death at 6 p.m. Dr. Delitzsch, who strongly dis-
avows any superstitious leanings, was ashamed to mention the circumstance
to Mr. Boscawen on reaching that gentleman's house, although on his return
home he owns that his nervous apprehensions of some mournful event
in his own family found relief in tears, and that he recorded all the facts
in his note-book that same night. Dr. Delitzsch told the story at our
informant's breakfast-table, with all the circumstances mentioned above,
including the hour at which he heard the shrill cry. He distinctly denied
having been thinking of Mr. George Smith at the time."

In January, 1885, (having failed to elicit from Herr Delitzsch any
reply to several previous applications,) we sent him a copy of this extract,
telling him that we proposed to state, in reprinting it, that it had been
first forwarded to him, with a request that he would contradict it if it did
not truthfully represent the facts. No reply has been received ; and
Mr. Gortz, of the British Museum, tells us that Herr Delitzsch expressed
to him a reluctance to write on the subject. We may presume, how-
ever, that, had the statement been substantially inaccurate, he would have
said so.

[If the hours are correctly given, the cry was heard about 3^ hours
after the death.]

VOL. n. 2 o 2

564 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

(616) From Miss Bushell, Hythe, Kent. u jg85

" On the evening of Feb. 18, 1863, I distinctly heard myself called,
and recognised the voice as that of Dr. Harding, a retired physician, who
lived in the same town [Ramsgate, and in the next street]. The voice
seemed to come from the staircase. I was walking along a passage, and
turned towards the stairs, so real did it appear ; though I could hardly
imagine Dr. Harding to be in the house. I knew him slightly. He was a
kind, friendly man, and he always spoke to me if we met in the streets,
addressing me as ' Bushell ' — which is the name I heard that evening. The
next day, I heard that Dr. Harding had died the preceding afternoon or
evening. I cannot fix the precise hour. Though out of health, he was
not confined to the house, and I had met him out of doors about three days
before the occurrence, so that I was not by any means expecting his death.

"This is the only hallucination of the senses that I have ever ex-
perienced. " MATILDA BUSHELL."

We find from the Register of Deaths that Dr. Harding died (aged 50)
on Feb. 20, 1863. Miss Bushell is certain (and this is a point which
would be likely to be rightly observed at the time) that her experience was
on the evening before the morning on which she heard of the death — that
no longer interval elapsed ; and she has no separate recollection of the date
of her experience. It is probable, therefore, that the " 18th" in the first
line of the account is wrong, and that the coincidence was a close one.
Not, however, so close as was at first represented ; for Miss Bushell's later
impression is that the death took place in the early hours of the morning —
i.e., some hours after her evening experience of (presumably) Feb. 19. In
answer to an inquiry, she says that she did not mention what she had heard
to anyone before the death was known.

(617) From Mrs. Fagan, Elfanwalt, Bovey Tracey, Newton Abbot.

"1883.

" I was residing in England, while my son [who was one of the
percipients in case 310] was a chaplain in India. I one day experienced
a prayerful and earnest desire, in going up to the altar one Easter Day, that
somehow, I knew not how, my son might be permitted to communicate
me ; and as I received without raising my eyes to the celebrant, I felt
my desire granted. In due course of post, my son asked me if I could
explain what had occurred to him at about the time when he knew I must
have been making my Easter Communion. While preparing for the
evening service, and not thinking of me or home, he heard me call him by
name, not as though in any distress, but with a tone of great urgency.
Instantly remembering how I was then occupied, he was with me in spirit,
and, though unconsciously, was permitted to satisfy my longing. After
this, though he knew there was no one in the house, he made diligent
search to prove to others that it was no delusion. The fact that Cardinal
Borromeo, while preaching elsewhere, had communicated the dying Pope
was not known to me for many years after."

In answer to an inquiry, Mrs. Fagan says that she made her Easter
Communion between noon and 1 p.m.; which would synchronise with 6-7
p.m. in the place where her son was. The year, she thinks, was 1874.

[This clearly must not be reckoned as a reciprocal case, since there is
no reason to suppose Mrs. Fagan's own impression to have been anything

vi.] AUDITORY AND TACTILE CASES. 565

but subjective. That impression is, however, of importance, as indicating
the intensity of her feeling at the moment. Her son has occasionally had
subjective auditory hallucinations, but not sufficiently often to diminish
appreciably the force (such as it is) of the present coincidence. The case
is of course not one on which much stress can be laid.]

In the following example, the fact of non-recognition tells against
the supposition that the hallucination was due to anxiety. As for the
sense of feeling someone's presence, I have already pointed out that
a faint auditory impression is sufficient to account for it ;x and even
the " feeling someone stooping over " (which occurs again in the next
case) need not imply any distinct hallucination of touch.

(618) From Miss Summerbell, 140, Kensington Park Road, W. (men-
tioned in Vol. I., p. 507). As the more distinct part of the impression
seems to have been received after she had not only been woke, but had
herself uttered a couple of sentences, the case may be fairly reckoned in
the waking class. "1882

" A lady, to whom I was much attached, and who had had partial care
of me during some part of my early youth, had for some years suffered
from a complaint which at last necessitated a surgical operation. This
operation was performed early in August, 1877, by Dr. Spencer Wells ;
my friend was in a house, chosen by Dr. Wells for the purpose, in Seymour
Street. The operation was successful, and we had the assurance of Dr.
Wells, and of the other doctor who attended her, that she was doing well.
I was staying with her nephew, at Weybridge, at the time. Every day
we heard better accounts of the patient. On Saturday evening, Mr. T.,
with whom I was staying, received a letter saying that his aunt was out
of danger, and appointing the following Tuesday for him and me to go and
see her.

" We went to bed in excellent spirits, and I slept at once. I was
awakened, in the dim dawn, by feeling someone stooping over me.
Thinking it was Mrs. T. who had come into the room for some purpose, I
said, aloud, ' Is that you, Annie 1 ' I received no answer, but I felt,
though I could not see, someone close to me. I spoke again, and I
distinctly heard a voice whisper, ' Soon will you and I be lying, Each
within our narrow bed.' I was terrified. I looked at my watch to see if
it was nearly time for people to be moving about. It was 4 o'clock. I
could not sleep. I felt horrified and miserable, but oddly, I never thought
of my friend. When I went down in the morning, my friends remarked
that I was silent and dull. I said I was sure something was going to take
place, and at length I told them what had happened. Of course they
laughed. I went to church with Mr. T., and the first hymn sung was the
one I had fancied I heard in the night, beginning ' Days and moments'
quickly flying.' This made me more depressed, but I still did not think
of my friend.

" On Monday we went on the river in a small boat, and I told Mr.
T. I knew we should be drowned because of my presentiment. We

1 See Vol. i., p. 528 second note ; and compare case 172.

566 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

however, arrived safe at home at 7 p.m., when Mr. T. found a letter,
saying that at 10 on Saturday night, his aunt had suddenly exhibited
bad symptoms, and that she died at 4 o'clock on Sunday morning.

"L. D SUMMERBELL."

[The Times obituary records that the death took place, in Somerset
Street (not Seymour Street), on Aug. 4, 1877. This was a Saturday, not
a Sunday ; therefore, if Miss Summerbell is correct as to the hour of her
impression, the coincidence was less close than she represents, as the death
must have taken place before midnight.

We cannot obtain Mr. T.'s corroboration, as he died in the year
following the occurrence.]

The next two records seem to illustrate the occurrence of several
similar telepathic experiences to the same percipient (compare
No. 279). The cases not being strong ones, I have included each
set under a single evidential number.

(619) From Mrs. E. M. Maunsell, Bally william, Rathkeale, Ireland,
who says of herself, " I am neither nervous nor superstitious, but a very
matter-of-fact person." « October 27th, 1884.

" My eldest sister was paying us a visit, when she was taken ill with
internal cramp ; she called to me in a peculiar choking voice ; we used
remedies, and she soon recovered. About a year afterwards, she was
staying with another sister, when one night I was awakened by a distinct
impression of my sister stooping over me, and calling ' Eliza ' in the same
choking voice. I sleep very soundly, but I started up wide awake, and
again the voice seemed to call me from the open window, faint and choking,
' Eliza.' I am a rather stoical person in tunes of danger or fright, so I
merely said to myself ' Isabella is ill,' and was soon again fast asleep.
The next time I saw my sister, she told me that the very night I had
heard her call, and nearly to the hour, (for I had heard the clock strike
12) she had been taken ill, and had been only able to stagger out of bed
to call for help. This was my first experience of this kind, that I can
remember ; I was then a young girl. I was not particularly attached to
my sister, for she had married young and left home ; but she always looked
up to me and considered me a great authority on most points.

" The second instance also concerned my eldest sister. My father, at
the time of which I write, was living in Limerick, as did also my sister.
One evening about 8, I left the room to make the tea ; passing the foot of
the staircase, I heard my sister's voice, hushed and distinct, call ' Eliza.' I
listened, but the call was not repeated. I thought at once, ' Isabella is ill,
and will send for me.' I hurried, and prepared tea, and I well remember
taking a second slice of bread, for, I thought, I may be up with her all
night. Less than half an hour after a note was brought my father, I
watched him, and when he had read it asked, ' Is Isabella ill 1 ' ' Yes,'
my father replied, ' she is very ill, and is calling for you.' My father, who
was a doctor, accompanied me to her house ; we doctored her, and she
recovered after an illness of four or five days.

" My father is long dead ; so is my eldest sister. The events occurred
over 20 years ago, many years before my marriage."

vi.] AUDITORY AND TACTILE CASES. 567

On Dec. 19, 1885, Mrs. Maunsell wrote : —

" On another occasion, when living with my father and mother, I
heard my mother call me ; I found her ghastly pale, and very ill ; but she
assured me she had not called me ; as indeed, she was too faint to raise
her voice. On another occasion, my brother-in-law, who had gone to
London, and was very ill, though it was kept a secret, had returned on his
way home, as far as Dublin. I was not thinking at all about him ; but,
one day in this house, I was walking from the office to the back door of
the dining-room (mid-day), when I heard him call loudly his wife's name,
' Martha.' I wrote at once to her (she had not accompanied him) to make
inquiries. She had received a letter that morning, [to the effect that] he
would return next evening, Saturday, and was quite strong after his trip.
The following Tuesday I received a letter from my cousin saying that Mr.
Caswell [the brother-in-law] was found dead in his armchair, partly
dressed, at his lodgings in Dublin, on Sunday morning. I had not known
he was ill at all. " ELIZA MAUNSELL."

In answer to an inquiry, Mrs. Maunsell states positively that she has
never had any hallucination of the sort except on these four occasions, (and
possibly one other, when what she heard may have been a real call). She
adds : —

" I regret extremely that I can procure for you no corroborative
evidence about my brother-in-law. My sister is far too nervous a person
for me to have told her at the time. The event [i.e., the death] occurred
on the 9th of August, 1874."

[We have verified this date in the Freeman's Journal, which describes
the death as having been rather sudden. Mrs. Maunsell heard the voice
3 or 4 days before ; and though her brother-in-law was probably at that
time in a somewhat abnormal state, the accuracy of coincidence which
(if correctly remembered) would justify us in regarding the former
experiences as very probably telepathic, is lacking to this one.]

(620) From Mr. J. Augustus Edmonds, 16, Waterloo Road South,
Wolverhampton. The evidence is third-hand, and is admitted by special
exception (Vol. I., p. 158, note). Mr. Edmonds received the account of
the second of the two incidents narrated from both his father and brother.

1883.

Mr. Edmonds first describes a very serious illness which attacked his
father (the Rev. T. C. Edmonds, pastor of the Baptist Church, St.
Andrew's Street, Cambridge,) in the year 1831. During the illness a
letter was received from a friend of his father's, the Rev. Josiah Wilkinson,
of Saffron Walden, Essex.

" It was to this effect. I don't vouch for the perfect verbal accuracy.
It was addressed to my mother.

" ' I have been made aware l of the alarming illness of your dear
husband, but I have the happiness to assure you that his sickness is not
unto death.' The note concluded with a message of love, when my father

1 Mr. Edmonds does not know whether Mr. Wilkinson had heard of the illness in
any normal way, or whether the first intimation of this fact, as well as the assurance of
recovery, was communicated in the abnormal manner afterwards described. The
assurance of recovery may easily, of course, have been subjectively imagined, and in no
way concerns us here.

568 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

should be able to receive it, and of sympathy to herself. This note arrived
when my father was to all appearances as near his end as at any period of
his illness.

" When my father was able to see a few friends, Mr. Wilkinson came
over and urged him, as soon as he was permitted to move, to come with
my brother Cyrus, his second son, and visit him, which they did. These
three being alone, my father mentioned this note and said it very much
surprised him, on account of the singularly confident manner in which his
recovery was spoken of. To which Mr. Wilkinson replied that in several
instances he had been told by an audible voice of some fact specially
concerning his interests or welfare, a voice which none but himself heard,
and there was no visible presence. These intimations, he said, had always
been made to him during his family worship, and (I believe I am right in
saying) that they had never been mentioned out of his own family. He
said, however, ' I will relate one such case.

" ' I was kneeling at prayer one morning with my family, when a voice
said, " Your brother is dead."1 I had but one brother, to whom I was greatly
attached, who lived at the West End of London. The shock was so great
that I sank on the floor in a swoon. On recovery I desired my wife to put
the needful things into my portmanteau, and send to stop the Cambridge
coach to London, a short distance from the house, telling her that my
brother was dead, and that I must go to London. On arrival I drove to
the house, found the blinds closely drawn, and on coming to the door the
servant expressed great relief at seeing me, saying that his master had
died suddenly in the night and his mistress was in a most sad condition.

" 'Now,' Mr. Wilkinson said, ' on the morning on which I wrote that
note to your wife, at morning prayer with the family, a voice said, " Your
dearest friend is very ill, but his sickness is not unto death." I heard no
more, but as soon as our worship was concluded I wrote that note.'

" J. A. EDMONDS."

§ 2. In the next two cases, the impression, if really a hallucina-
tion, seems to have represented a sound which was actually in the
agent's ears at the time.

(621) From Mrs. Malcolm, Wribbenhall, Bewdley, (mentioned above,
P- 79). "August 5th, 1885.

"During the commencement of the year 1849 (I being then a young
girl), I had a tedious illness. On one occasion, to relieve a congested lung,
I had a blister applied, and, in consequence, was prevented on that night
from obtaining sleep. One of my brothers was with the army in the
Punjaub at that time, and my thoughts were constantly with him, and
doubtless I followed the events of the war with intense interest. On the
night in question, being, as I have said, wide awake, I was astonished by
hearing the report of big guns. I raised myself in bed with some difficulty,
and then continued to hear the distant firing of cannon, sometimes nearer,
sometimes remote. At length the guns ceased, but were succeeded by a
sharp and rapid discharge of musketry. The sounds lasted altogether
about four hours. My great anxiety was that some one should hear these
strange sounds of battle as well as myself ; but I was forbidden at the time

1 Compare cases 153 and 284.

vi.] AUDITORY AND TACTILE CASES. 569

to leave my room, and hearing my father coughing in his bedroom opposite,
I pacified myself with the assurance that he must be awake and would
hear what I heard. Great was my mortification in the morning to find
that neither he nor my mother were aware of anything unusual having
occurred in the night past. Then my old friend the doctor came in,
inquiring laughingly whether I was growing fanciful (having been told my
story). I also laughed and replied, ' You shall know if my battle is mere
fancy when the next news comes from the seat of war in India.'

" Whether this was my first connecting of the sounds I had listened to
with an Indian battle, or whether I had done so during the continuance
of those sounds, is a point I am not now clear upon. But although the
doctor, when out of my hearing, desired that I might not again be left
alone at night, it is observable that neither then nor at any later time was
I rendered the least nervous by my strange experience, nor did I appre-
hend evil to the brother engaged in the campaign. In due time, tidings of
the severe battle at Goojerat reached us — the day on which it was fought,
and hours, allowing for difference of time, exactly coinciding with the date
of my prophetic l battle. My brother was in the thick of the fight, but
escaped unhurt. " GEORGINA MALCOLM."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Malcolm says : —

" I send you a written testimony from one of my sisters, as to my
having spoken of hearing the battle at the time of the occurrence. The
hours during which the sounds continued were from 1 to 5 o'clock a.m. in
the morning as far as my recollection serves. At the time of the occurrence
I was living in my father's house in a very remote part of Warwickshire.
The nearest soldiers' quarters to us would be at Coventry or Birmingham,
at a distance of between 30 and 40 miles."

The sister's corroboration, dated October 9, 1885, is as follows : —

" 1 remember the incident about the battle of Goojerat. You were ill
at the time, and in the morning you told us you felt as if you had been in
a battle, as you had heard continual firing and report of cannon for a long
time. I cannot say what time of the night it was when you heard it.

" I think you made a note of it, and we heard afterwards from Frank
that the battle began on the following morning. « LUCY DICKINS "

From the London Gazette for April 19th, 1849, it appears that the
battle, which took place on Feb. 21, lasted from 8.30 until midday, after
which the pursuit of the enemy commenced, lasting until dusk. 8.30 a.m.
at Goojerat would correspond to about 3.30 a.m. in England.

Mrs. Malcolm nas experienced no other auditory hallucination, except
that twice, when overstrained by nursing a relative in a fatal illness, she
had the impression of hearing her name called.

[The fact that the sounds were not heard by others, though at least
one other person seems to have been awake at the time, is rather a strong
proof that the experience was a hallucination ; and if so, there is at least
an appreciable chance that it was telepathic. I have mentioned a case of
subjective hallucination of the same character in Vol. I., p. 494, second
note. The long duration of the impression is, owing to its " rudimentary"
character, less remarkable than that alleged in cases 300 and 590.]

1 As to the tendency to regard impressions corresponding with unknown reality as
prophetic, see p. 535, note.

570 SUPPLEMENT. CHAP.

(622) From a lady, Mrs. M., whose name and address it seems right
to suppress, though she made no stipulation on the subject. The account
was received in August, 1884.

Mrs. M. describes how, in July, 1874, while spending her holiday hap-
pily in the vale of Leven, and in perfect health, she " was awakened sud-
denly with a cry of distress ringing in my ears, and it was twice repeated
after I became wide awake. The last time it seemed partly suppressed
and further away. It seemed very near at first, and I recognised the
voice as poor little Tom's. [Tom was a child between 2 and 3 years of
age, one of several of whom she had been in charge, and whom she had
known to be considerably ill-used by the lady who was acting as his
guardian.] I sprang out of bed and looked out. It was a lovely still
night, not a movement nor a sound disturbed the air, and it was so light
that I could see the time on a small silver watch which was lying on the
table. It was 12.45."

The effect on Mrs. M. was so great that she mentioned the experience
next morning to the aunt with whom she was staying, and resolved
to return at once to the scene of her duties, but was prevented by a
telegram giving her other instructions. When she did return, she learnt
from the servants that, on the Sunday night when she had heard the cries,
Tom's guardian had had him in her room all night ; and that they " heard
cries and moans until they fell asleep, and at midnight were awakened by
three successive cries that rang through the house— the last a suppressed
echo of the others." Next morning the servants found marks of cruel ill-
usage on the child, which Mrs. M. found still very apparent.

[We have not received the aunt's corroboration, though Mrs. M.
promised to try to obtain it for us. The correspondence of the three cries
is a detail not unlikely to have been subsequently imagined. See p. 229,
note.]

§ 3. The following is a group of non-vocal cases, of an entirely
rudimentary type (see above, pp. 125-32).

(623) From a gentleman who does not feel justified in allowing his
brother's, the agent's, name to appear, and is therefore obliged to with-
hold his own from publication. The percipient has died since 1883, when
the account was written.

In the autumn of 1874, the narrator's brother, W. M., a resident in
Edinburgh, was staying, with a sister, some 18 miles from that place.
" He had been subject, at irregular intervals, to attacks of illness of a
severe character, but, at this date, was in fair health, and attending to
business.

" Two or three days after his arrival at our sister's house he was quite
unexpectedly seized, late one evening, with serious illness, hematemesis
supervened, and within two or three hours from the first seizure he was a
corpse. The late hour, and distance from the railway station, prevented
any communication during the night with our household in Edinburgh.

"Between 11 and 12 o'clock that night, my mother, aged then 72, but
active and vigorous in body and mind, as indeed she is still, was alone in
her bedroom and in the act of undressing. She occupied this room alone,
and it was the only sleeping apartment on the dining-room flat which wa

vi.] AUDITORY AND TACTILE CASES. 571

in use that night, the only other bedroom there being the adjoining room,
then untenanted, owing to my own absence in the North. My father,
eldest brother, and sister-in-law occupied rooms on the flat above. The
servants' accommodation was in the under or sunk flat beneath, shut off
from the upper by a swing door at the foot of a flight of steps. A small
dog, the only other inmate of the house, slept that night, and indeed
always, in the kitchen. My mother was in her usual good health, her
faculties perfectly preserved, and her mind untroubled with any apprehen-
sions of evil tidings. She had read, as usual, a portion of her Bible, and
was in the act of undressing, when she was suddenly startled by a most
extraordinary noise at the door of her room, which opened directly into
the inner lobby. It was as if made by a person standing directly outside
and close to the door, but it was utterly unlike any ordinary summons or
alarm. In her own words, it was like nothing so much as the noise of
someone hastily and imperiously lashing the door with a heavy riding whip,
demanding admittance. It was loud, and repeated three or four times,
as if insisting on attention, with brief intervals between. Then it ceased.

" My mother, though possessed of considerable coolness, was startled ;
but with a resolution which many might envy, she proceeded to light a
candle, knowing the hall lights were extinguished, the whole of the
inmates having before retired for the night, and went to the door. ' I
knew,' she said, ' that it was no one in the house seeking admission. .Such
an imperative summons would never have been made at my door.' On
opening it, nothing was visible, the various doors opening on the lobby
were closed, and the fastenings of the front door undisturbed. Much
surprised, though retaining self-possession, my mother debated with herself
as to rousing the other members of the family, but ultimately resolved not
to do so unless the sound was repeated, which it was not. It was about
midnight, but my mother did not note the precise hour and minute. Early
next forenoon, my father and sister-in-law having left, the news came
that my brother had expired at midnight, 18 miles off by road from
Edinburgh.

" It may be noted that nothing in or near the door could possibly have
occasioned the noise in question, the material being old, well-seasoned
timber, not liable to warp or crack. It afterwards appeared that the noise
in question had not been heard by anyone in the house save by my mother,
which no one will wonder at who knows how perfectly ' deafened ' old-
fashioned stone houses in Edinburgh invariably are.

" Speaking for my own part, I would not have placed so much reliance
on' the narrative which I have from my mother's own lips, had it come
from any other person in the house. The others might have been
imaginative or nervous, or wise after the event, or possibly wholly
mistaken. But with my mother's clear and balanced judgment, little
affected by matters which powerfully sway others, I have no room for
hesitation whatsoever. I believe, as firmly as I believe in the fact of niy
own existence, that the circumstances happened exactly as she narrated
them."

[The entry in the Register of Deaths, which is probably correct, shows
that the death occurred on September 2, 1875 (not 1874), at 4.50 a.m., not
at midnight. The coincidence was therefore not so exact as the narrator
imagined. Still, if the mother's experience was a hallucination — and it

572 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

certainly does not seem easy to explain it otherwise — the identity of night
makes the case a striking sample of its kind.]

(624) From Mrs. Callin, of whom her mistress, Miss Rosenberg, of
Gabarrie Villa, Sarsfield Road, Balham, says : —

" I can vouch for the accuracy and trustworthiness of Mrs. Callin,
the narrator of the incident described."

" December, 1882.

" Mr. J., employed as agent by my mistress, Miss C., resident in the
Royal Avenue, Chelsea, had long suffered severely from asthma, and on
Miss C. going to see him one day, when he had been unable to go out for
many weeks, some time in November, 1879, he remarked he should go to
see her on her birthday (having always done so for many years), if he had
to take a cab for it ; his wife rejoined, ' I do not think you will,' meaning
his state of health would not allow him to do so, and he replied to her,
' Yes, I trill.'

" Miss C. retired to bed as usual on the night of December 7th. I
slept in the same room, which was the front one on the first floor, with
folding doors into the small dressing-room behind, no other person being
in the house. In the early morning of next day (8th, and her birthday)
Miss C. was awoke by a loud knock at the folding-door, and, listening, it
was repeated : she then called me, but before she could rouse me, heard
it again, the third time.1 I then got up, and looked outside both the
doors with a light, and could see no one ; I also looked at the time, which
was a quarter past four. We then both went to sleep again, I thinking
my mistress had dreamt this, but she always persisted she heard the
knocks distinctly.

" After breakfast we heard that Mr. J. had died at four that morn-
ing, and Miss C. said to me that he came to tell her, having so certainly
promised to go to her on that day.

" Miss C. died the following March, aged 94, but having all her
faculties clear to the last, and often alluding to Mr. J.'s visit on her
birthday. His age was about 60 only, and he had frequently said he
should die before her, and she used to reply ' Don't wait for me out of
politeness,' being always ready with a joke. " M. CALLIN."

We find from the Times obituary that Mr. J. died on December 8, 1879.

[It may be conceived that Mr. J.'s previous promise of a visit on that
day worked itself out in the percipient's mind, when the day arrived, in the
form of a hallucination ; but such accurately-timed development is, as far
as I know, quite unexampled, except in some rare hypnotic cases of
commands and promises a longue echeance.~\

The following experiences — if hallucinations, and not due to some
undiscovered physical cause — are of interest as having taken precisely
the same form.2 It is one that is likely to raise a smile ; but
I must repeat that it is quite open to hallucinations of the senses to
take peculiar forms, and that there is no reason why telepathic speci-
mens should have an immunity in this respect (Vol. I., pp. 503, 547).
Moreover, the particular form here described may without improba-
1 See p. 229, note. 2 See p. 35.

vi.] AUDITORY AND TACTILE CASES. 573

bility be traced to early associations in the percipient's mind. The
grounds for doubting the telepathic origin of the impressions are, not
their oddness or triviality, but (1) the fact that they did not in any way
suggest the supposed agent, which always greatly diminishes the
force of the time-coincidence ; and (2) in one case the lack of precision
in the time-coincidence itself. The narrator, Miss H., is, in her own
words, " of a matter-of-fact disposition, and not a believer in things
out of the way," and she attaches no importance whatever to these
incidents. She withholds her name from publication out of defer-
ence to what she thinks would be the wishes of her relatives.

« ]ST_ - Vicarage, October 26th, 1884.

(625) "A few years ago [in 1874] I was staying with some relatives
at Folkestone, who had taken a house there for a few weeks and had
occupied it all the previous summer. We were a merry party, with young
people and children. I slept in a large room on the first floor. I was
awakened one night by the sound of many mice pattering over the floor ;
they appeared to be running swiftly and then out at the door. Much
astonished, I looked around to see where they could have come from, but
no trace appeared. In the morning I inquired of the nurse, who came to
call me, if she had heard anything, ' No,' was the reply. I foolishly said,
' Well, I do not mind mice, but in our family the sound of them means
death or ill luck.' I complained to the landlady, who said ' she had never
seen a mouse in her house ' ; she sent in a new trap, but nothing more was
heard of the intruders. Three or four days after this, came the sad news
of the death of a very dear relative from an accident, whilst abroad.
The event happened a few minutes before the noise of the mice had
disturbed me.

" In December, three years after this, I was at St. Leonards-on-Sea,
with a relative who had been seriously ill, and on the night of the 31st
December I sat up in my own room at the top of the house, to see the old
year out and the new one in. I have referred to a diary kept by my sister,
and I find I had spent a most quiet day. I was in good spirits, for my
invalid was much better, the fire in the room was bright, and I certainly
was not thinking of mice ; but just before 1 2 o'clock came the sound of
many mice sweeping over the floor. I heard it distinctly and with some
trepidation, but no one dear to me was ill. I noted down the fact, and,
having relatives abroad, awaited with some impatience the colonial mail.
I received the following note from my brother : —

" ' DEAR L., — I write to tell you a piece of sad news. Whilst you
were probably welcoming the new year, a few minutes before it arrived I
went down my garden, to receive the corpse of my eldest son ; he had
broken his neck by a fall from his horse three hours before.'

" I had been in the house where this occurred several times before,
and have stayed there several times since, but I have never seen or heard
real mice there.

" I may add that my mother regarded the sound of mice as an omen
of disaster, but she never would tell me why, looking upon it probably as
a superstition she wished her children to be free from."

574 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

In answer to a request for her sister's corroboration, Miss H. replies : —

" I regret to say that on religious grounds Mrs. L. will not write a
confirmatory note ; of course she says she perfectly remembers the circum-
stances, and that a mouse-trap was immediately purchased for my room.
That's practical."

In conversation, Miss H. informed me that she has had no other
hallucination, unless hearing some unaccountable knocks on one occasion,
when others heard them, be so counted. On the first occasion, in a
lodging, the boards were bare to a great extent. The second time the room
was carpeted. The noise was loud as well as distinct. Miss H. has since
heard real mice, and was glad to identify the sound again. Her mother's
superstition as to mice foreboding trouble had been constantly brought
before her mind, during her mother's life : it was much on her mother's
brain, so to speak.

The Army List shows that the death in the first case took place on
July 22, 1874.

We find the accident in the second case described in a local paper for
January 3, 1877, as having taken place on December 31 ; and the death
is reported as having taken place " about midnight "—i.e., allowing
for longitude, nearly 12 hours before Miss H.'s impression. Without
extenuating this element of weakness in the case, I may remind the
reader how frequently the emergence of telepathic percipience seems to
be deferred until a season of solitary recueilleinent (Vol. I., p. 201).

§ 4. The following are tactile cases.

(626) From Mr. W. B. Clegram, Saul Lodge, Stonehouse, Gloucester-

shire- "January 15th, 1884.

" I well remember a singular circumstance I have often heard my
father (one of the early civil engineers of this country) relate, which
occurred to himself. He was a man of very strong mind, and more free
from fancies and superstitions than most people. At the time of the
occurrence he was about 30 years of age.

" He was in the habit of lying with his right hand extended out of bed,
and one morning, about 5 o'clock, when wide awake, he felt a firm hand
grasp his, so much like the grasp of his father's hand that he immediately
told my mother 'that his father had taken his hand as he usually did
when saying " good-bye." ' His father died at that time that morning,
somewhat suddenly. My father did not know he was ill. His father
died near Sunderland ; my father at that time was living in Sussex.

"W. B. CLEGRAM."

Mr. Clegram mentioned in conversation that his grandfather had a
particularly firm and strong clasp of the hand, which was also a charac-
teristic of his father, the percipient. The latter was a strong, practical
man, as far removed as possible from superstition. The incident made a
deep and lasting impression upon him.

(627) From Lady Belcher, 25, Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park,

KW- "April, 1884.

" During the great French war, when Napoleon I. was overrunning

vi.] AUDITORY AND TACTILE CASES. 575

Holland, and after the unfortunate Walcheren expedition, our fleet was
ordered to the Scheldt, I believe in the severe winter of 1813. The
sailo rs and marines from the various ships were landed in parties to man
and defend the dykes. So severe was the cold that long wooden sheds
were erected, and large fires kept up for the watch parties. All the
officers in turn landed to keep the men to their posts.

" On one night when my father, Captain Peter Heywood, landed with
his men from the ' Montague,' the line of battle ship he commanded, and
the watch had been set, the officers stretched themselves down on some
mattresses, the first lieutenant near him, then the Master of Marines. All
was quiet, when the last mentioned officer cried out that some one had
laid a cold hand on his cheek ! Silence was ordered. Again in a few
minutes he made the same complaint and challenged the lieutenant, who
peremptorily ordered silence. A third time he made the same outcry,
jumped up and rushed from the spot in terror. The whole party were
thoroughly roused, and my father considered the circumstance so
peculiar that he noted it with the date and the precise hour at which it
had occurred.

" Weeks after, when the despatches and letters arrived from England,
the Master of Marines received the news of his father's death and the
hour of his departure, which tallied exactly with the note which Captain
Heywood had made. Up to the period of my dear father's death I have
heard him mention the fact, but never reasoned on it. He possessed a
calm judgment and a very religious mind. « DIANA BELCHER "

We learn from the Admiralty that Captain Peter Heywood was in
command of the "Montague" from July, 1813, to March, 1814 ; also that
there is no such officer as " Master of Marines," but that the Masters (now
styled Staff-Commissioners or Navigating Lieutenants) were George Dunn
and J. Sanford.

[This case is very remote ; and even if correct in the central fact,
cannot be relied on in details — e.g., as to the absolute exactitude of the
coincidence, and as to the three occurrences of the sensation, the favourite
legendary number (p. 229, note).]

(628) From Mrs. Spenser, 36, Portland Street, Southport, a member
of the Society of Friends. September 1st, 1871.

" I formerly had two aunts. One, my aunt De Mierre, residing at
Putney, had been confined three weeks. My aunt, Mrs. Williams [who
lived in London], being an invalid, was in the habit of taking a warm bath
at night. When her maid had placed her in it, she retired, until the time
appointed for leaving her had expired ; but one night, soon after she had
left, she was much alarmed by sounds of great distress from her mistress,
which led her hastily to ring for assistance and summon her master, for
her mistress's weeping and agitation were uncontrollable. As soon as her
husband entered the room, Mrs. Williams exclaimed, 'Susan is dead. She-
has been to take leave of me. Her kiss was like a waft of cold air upon
my cheek.' Her husband did his best to allay her agitation, telling her
she had fallen asleep in the bath and dreamt it. He also told her that he
had, that afternoon, seen one of her brothers who had told him that her
sister was so remarkably well that her husband was going to the play that

576 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

night, with other members of her family. But nothing soothed her until
he promised to send to Putney the next morning to inquire.

" The groom received orders to leave by 6 o'clock, so as to bring the
answer back by 8 o'clock. When the groom arrived at the house the
servant said, ' My mistress is dead. She was taken suddenly ill while
sitting up, and was dead before my master got home. She died at half-
past 10 o'clock' — the exact time that her sister was thrown into such
distress by her appearing to take leave of her. I remember the occurrence
well. "LucY SPENSER."

Mrs. Spenser writes on March 18, 1886 : " I think my aunt died about
1804. I am the only one living who heard the fact related at the time ;
and often, in after years, without any variation." And later, " I remember
.with unclouded clearness the particulars respecting my aunt's death — the
first in the family that I knew of and cared about. It was a great event
in the family, and the impression made on my mind was indelible." We
have failed to discover the exact date of the death : Mrs. de Mierre does
not seem to have been buried at Putney. In conversation Mrs. Spenser
stated that she thinks that there was an appearance, as well as the sensa-
tion of the kiss.

[The narrator, who wrote the above 15 years ago, shows even now no
sign of impaired memory ; but the case is again far too remote for details
to be trusted.]

(629) From the Rev. George Brett, The College, Weston-super-Mare,
who heard the account from the percipient", a very near relative of his own.

"January 26th, 1885.

" About 40 or 45 years ago, a Miss Sophia Wallace was engaged to a
Mr. Wilson. They were much attached to each other, and he seems to
have been a man whose mental constitution was of a kind to make him
capable of exerting a very real influence upon those among whom he was
known. He died of consumption before the time proposed for their
marriage ; naturally, his fiancee was very anxious, and much saddened
when it became evident that he would not live. On the evening of his
death she was passing along a darkened passage in a house where she was
staying, not more than 2 or 3 miles (perhaps less than 2) from the
house of Mr. Wilson, when she felt a cold hand clasp hers. Upon
comparison of time afterwards, she found this had occurred at the time of
Mr. Wilson's death. " GEO. BRETT."

[The anxiety here, of course, allows it to be supposed that the ex-
perience was purely subjective (Vol. I., p. 509).]

I will conclude this chapter with a case which suggests the same
sympathy of physical condition as we have encountered in certain
hypnotic cases (see above, pp. 330-1), where the transference is from the
" subject " to the operator. The exceptional rapport (established
or increased by a course of hypnotism) which existed between the
two persons concerned has been mentioned in Vol. I., p. 316, and
must be borne in mind in the judging of the present incident.

(630) From Mr. F. Corder, 46, Charlwood Street, S.W.

vi.] AUDITORY AND TACTILE CASES. 577

"December, 1882.

"On July 8, 1882, my wife went to London to have an operation
(which we both believed to be a slight one) performed on her eyes by the
late Mr. Critchett. The appointment was for 1.30 ; and, knowing from
long previous experience the close sympathy of our minds, about that time
I, at Brighton, got rather fidgety, and was much relieved — and perhaps a
little surprised and disappointed — at not feeling any decided sensation
which I could construe as sympathetic. Taking it therefore for granted
that all was well, I went out at 2.45 to conduct my concert at the
Aquarium, expecting to find there a telegram, as had been arranged, to
say that all was well. On my way I stopped, as usual, to compare my
watch with the big clock outside Lawsons' the clockmakers. At that
instant I felt my eyes flooded with water, just as when a chill wind gives
one a sudden cold in the eyes, though it was a hot, still summer's day.
The affection was so unusual and startling that my attention could not
but be strongly directed to it ; yet, the time being then 1 1 minutes to
3, I was sure it could have nothing to do with my wife's operation, and,
as it continued for some little time, thought I must have taken cold.
However, it passed off, and the concert immediately afterwards put it out
of my mind.

" At 4.0 I received a telegram from my wife ' All well over. A great
success,' and this quite took away all anxiety. But on going to town in
the evening, I found her in a terrible state of nervous prostration ; and it
appeared that the operation, though marvellously successful, had been of
a very severe character. Quite accidentally it came out that it was not
till 2.30 that Mrs. Corder entered the operating-room, and that the
operation commenced, after the due administration of an anaesthetic, at
about 10 minutes to 3, as near as we could calculate.

"F. CORDER."

[If telepathy is a reality, there seems at any rate a fair probability
that this incident was telepathic. But it is no doubt possible to suppose
that the occupation of Mr. Corder's thoughts with his wife's condition had
induced a sympathetic liability to the peculiar affection recorded, and that
the reason why it came to a head at that particular time was simply the
change of physical condition involved in going out into the open air. It
will be observed, however, that the day was hot, which rather tells against
this hypothesis.]

VOL. II. 2 P

[CHAP.

CHAPTER VII.

CASES AFFECTING MORE THAN ONE OF THE PERCIPIENT'S SENSES.

THIS chapter contains some further cases in which the senses of
sight and hearing were both affected.

(631) From the Story of my Life, by Colonel Meadows Taylor,
Vol. II., pp. 32-33.

" This determination [to live unmarried] was the result of a very
curious and strange incident that befell me during one of my marches to
Hyderabad. I have never forgotten it, and it returns to this day to my
memory with a strangely vivid effect that I can neither repel nor explain.
I purposely withhold the date of the year. In my very early life, I had
been deeply and devotedly attached to one in England, and only
relinquished the hope of some day winning her when the terrible order
came out that no furlough to Europe would be granted. One evening I
was at the village of Dewas Kudea, after a very long afternoon and
evening march from Muktul, and I lay down very weary ; but the barking
of village dogs, and the baying of jackals, and over-fatigue and heat,
prevented sleep, and I was wide awake and restless. Suddenly, for my
tent door was wide open, I saw the face and figure so familiar to me, but
looking older, and with a sad and troubled expression ; the dress was
white, and seemed covered with a profusion of lace, and glistened in the
bright moonlight. The arms were stretched out, and a low plaintive cry
of ' Do not let me go ; do not let me go ! ' reached me. I sprang forward,
but the figure receded, growing fainter and fainter till I could see it no
longer, but the low sad tones still sounded. I had run barefooted across
the open space, where my tents were pitched, very much to the astonish-
ment of the sentry on guard, but I returned to my tent without speaking
to him.

" I wrote to my father, I wished to know whether there was any hope
for me. He wrote back to me these words : ' Too late, my dear son — on
the very day of the vision you describe to me, A. was married.' "

Miss Meadows Taylor, the editor of the book from which this passage
is quoted, writes to us : —

" 6, Phillimore Terrace, Kensington, W.

" December 5th, 1883.
" I have received your letter on the subject of the vision mentioned in

vii.] CASES AFFECTING BOTH SIGHT AND HEARING. 579

my father's, Colonel Meadows Taylor's, ' Life.' I have heard him mention
it very often, and he always related the incident precisely in the same
manner, and exactly as it is in the book. I can throw no further light
upon it ; nor can I add any further particulars. The lady is dead, and I
am not aware that she ever knew of the circumstance.

" ALICE MEADOWS TAYLOR."

[We have discovered a certain amount of inaccuracy in another narrative
told in the same book; otherwise the present one would not have been
relegated to the Supplement. Miss Meadows Taylor's remarks show, how-
ever, that the experience was distinctly imprinted on her father's memory.
The detail as to the lace, it will be observed, is of a sort very likely to have
been " read back " into the vision after the news arrived which would seem
to make it appropriate.]

(632) From the Rev. J. Hotham (Congregational Minister), Port Elliot,
South Australia, who told us (in 1884) that the account was given to him
by some friends, Mrs. Leaworthy and her daughters, and was written out
by him the same evening " in nearly the same language in which it was
given, and submitted to Mrs. Leaworthy, who corrected it." It may there-
fore be taken as her account. Mr. Hotham has since died, and his son
says that no more information can be obtained.

The account first describes the rescue, in 1841, of the crew of the
French ship, " L'Orient," off the coast of Devon, mainly by the exertions
of Mr. Leaworthy.

" The captain, during his stay in the neighbourhood, was a constant
visitor at our house, and became quite a favourite. After he had recovered
from his cold and wetting, he told us that he was sure something serious
had happened at home. When asked why he thought so, he said that
just before the storm came on, he had seen his wife standing close beside
him, and that she had said : ' Do not grieve for me.' Well, we all tried
to put this melancholy idea out of his head. We told him he was low-
spirited at the loss of his ship, and that nothing but imagination had
made him fancy this thing.

" Of course the captain wrote directly home, giving an account of the
loss of his ship and cargo, and anxiously awaited a reply. He was
detained some weeks among us, and during that time we became very
intimate. In due time he received a letter informing him that his wife
had been confined, and mother and child were both doing well. We then
joked, him about his fears, and congratulated him upon the good news he
had received. During the weeks he further remained with us, we set to
and made up a box of presents — small things, &c., for the baby. After
completing all his arrangements, he bid us good-bye, and started for home.
A letter from him, however, informed us that the presentiment was too
truly fulfilled. His wife died on that night ; but when his friends
received his letter mournfully detailing the loss of his vessel, they were
afraid to send him word about the loss of his wife, and so replied as we
have said."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Hotham added : —

" Mrs. Leaworthy, senior, has recently died. Her daughters are still
living — one, Mrs. Lindsay, only a short distance from me ; and the other,

VOL. n. 2 P 2

580 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

who married Mr. John Hindmarsh, only son of our first Colonial Governor,
has removed to New Zealand.

" In answer to your questions — (1) The account was given me at the
house of Mr. Jno. Hindmarsh, near Port Elliot, South Australia. (2)
Yes. By ' died on that night ' I mean on the night he saw the apparition
— the night the storm began. " JNO. HOTHAM."

(633) From the late General Craigie, who told us (March 11, 1883)

that he had heard the facts from Colonel and Mrs. , the parents of the

percipient.

General Craigie began by describing how, in 1868, he became

acquainted with Colonel and his family, resident at Mussoorie, and

at their house saw a good deal of some relatives of his own, Mr. and
Mrs. B.

"The year 1868 had come to a close. With the termination of the
season, of course all European visitors had returned to their homes in the
plains. In the ordinary course of relief, my regiment was ordered to
Cawnpore, and from that time I lost sight of Mr. and Mrs. B., whom
I left behind at Meerut. I cannot, without referring to friends at a
distance, give the dates of what follows ; but I believe that it was in
the beginning of 1869 that society was shocked by hearing that Mr. B.
had [in consequence of domestic unhappiness due to his own conduct] shot
himself. He shot himself at Meerut, at about 8 o'clock in the evening.

" On that night Colonel — — 's wife -and daughter were together in a
bedroom at 10 p.m. The former had already got into bed ; the latter
was brushing out her hair by her cheval-glass, and in her night attire.
Suddenly the girl exclaimed : ' Oh, mamma, there's Mr. B ! ' ' Where ? '
cried the scandalised mother, clutching and pulling up the bed-clothes.1
' There, mamma ! Do you not see him ? There — he says : " Good-bye,
Sissy — good-bye ! " There, now he's going — now he's gone ! ' An immediate
alarm was given ; the room, the house, the garden were carefully searched,
without obtaining any satisfactory clue to so extraordinary a scene in

a lady's bedchamber. Colonel closely questioned the girl, who

not only positively adhered to her previous declarations, but now detailed
the clothes worn by Mr. B. as he appeared to her.

" Two days afterwards, the post, and newspapers, brought to Mussoorie
the news of the suicide of Mr. B. Colonel — — and his wife did not com-
municate the fact to their daughter for some days, as they thought
that since the night when she seemed to have seen Mr. B. she had been
strangely depressed. When the fact was gently broken to her, it had such
an efi'ect that never from that day was any allusion ever made to the
occurrence. " H. C. CRAIGIE,

" Major-General."

We find from the East India Company's Register that Lieut. B.'s
death took place on Nov. 6, 1868, at Meerut.

[Colonel is dead. We have applied to his widow for her recol-

1 This is almost certainly an illustration of that unfortunate tendency to give
spurious vividness to a scene, by which second-hand evidence is so apt to be disfigured.
But it is often rather in adding details than in altering essential points that this
dramatising tendency finds its chance ; and thus the distrust which it excites, though
legitimate, may easily extend too far.

VIL] CASES AFFECTING BOTH SIGHT AND HEARING. 581

lections of the incident, but have not as yet received a reply. We have
ascertained that Colonel — — was on furlough in 1868.]

(634) Dr. Spencer T. Hall, a well-known writer on forestry, &c., in.
his Days in Derbyshire (1863), pp. 85-6, relates as follows: —

" Philip and his first wife, Martha, who was a cousin of mine, having
no children of their own, adopted the little daughter of a young woman,
who went to live at Derby. The child called them father and mother as
soon as she could speak, not remembering her own parents, not even her
mother. While yet very young, she one day began to cry out that there
was a young woman looking at her, and wanting to come to her, and,
according to her description of the person, it must have been her mother.
As no one else saw the apparition, and the child continued for more than
half an hour to be very excited, Philip took her out of the house to that of
a neighbour ; but the apparition kept them company, talking by the way.
They then went to another house, where it accompanied them still, and
seemed as though it wanted to embrace the child : but at last vanished in
the direction of Derby — as the little girl, now a young woman, describes it
— in a flash of fire.

" Derby is about 14 miles distant from Holloway, and as in that day
there was neither railway nor telegraph, communication between them
was much slower than at present. As soon, however, as it was possible
for intelligence to come, the news arrived that the poor child's mother had
been burnt to death ; that it happened about the time when it saw her
apparition ; and, in short, that she was sorrowing and crying to be taken
to the child during the whole of the time between being burnt and her
expiration.

" This is no ' idle ghost story,' but a simple matter of fact, to which
not only Philip, but all his old neighbours can testify ; and the young
woman has not only related it more than once to me, but she told it in
the same artless and earnest manner to my friend, the late Dr. Samuel
Brown, of Edinburgh, who once called at the cottage with me, repeating it
still more clearly to Messrs. Fowler and Wells, on our recent visit."

In answer to inquiries, the narrator (since deceased) wrote to us : —
" 1, Leopold Grove, Blackpool.

"November 14th, 1884.

"It is now a generation since I resided in Derby, and most of those
known to me there are now dead or the addresses forgotten. Philip
Spencer, my cousin, died long ago, and his second wife too. I have
forgotten the young woman's name, but she may be married, or have left
the neighbourhood. My poor dear friend, Dr. Samuel Brown, is dead.
If anybody is living at Holloway likely to remember all the particulars of
the case you mention, my cousin, Mrs. Sarah Buckle, may, but I cannot
tell. [We wrote ; but the lady appears to have left the place, and our
letter was returned.] You may, however, refer to me as to the accuracy^
of the narrative in my book. Anything more carefully or clearly attested
than what is written I never heard, and I could have had no motive for
inaccuracy. « SPENCER T. HALL."

[One may surmise that this was very possibly a case of telepathic
hallucination, without placing reliance on the details.]

582 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

(635) From Mrs. "Walsh, of The Priory, Lincoln. The percipient re-
fuses a first-hand and signed account; she has risen in life, and is very
sensitive as to anything which may recall her former dependent position.
The Rev. J. J. Lias, who procured the narrative for us, tells us that he
first heard it in the lifetime of Mr. Walsh, who " was by no means a
credulous man, but a man of the world."

"February 18th, 1884.

" Some time in the year 1862 (I think) I was living with my husband
and family of little children, accompanied by our English nurse, in apart-
ments in the city of Brussels. The house we occupied was a large one,
and we rented the drawing-room and the floor above. The ground floor
was occupied by the owner of the house, a Belgian, and his wife and little
children. We had no intercourse with this family ; we had our own
kitchen on the drawing-room floor, and the upper floor consisted of nursery,
with nursery bedroom opening from it. We had a Flemish general ser-
vant, who went home about 9 every night. Our English nurse was a
very clever girl, about 22 or 23 years of age. She read a good deal,
and taught herself French. She was very matter-of-fact, and handy and
useful in every way. She had been with me 5 or 6 years. Her parents
were labouring people in the neighbourhood of London, and by reading
and culture she had raised herself a good deal out of their sphere. We
had been about 12 months away from England, when the circumstance
I write of happened. M.'s mother, after having a large family — the
youngest being about 9 or 10 — did not tell M., nor did any of the family,
that she was again expecting an addition. The wife of our landlord had
been confined two days, so was in her own room, on the ground floor of
the house we lived in.

" One night my husband and myself had been out to dinner. On
returning, a little after 10 o'clock, my husband was amazed to find our
apartments in darkness, and he ran up to the nursery floor to complain to
M. of her inattention ; as the other servant had gone home it was her
place to light our room. My husband found the nursery lighted, but
empty, and going towards the children's room he met M. coming out. She
began, ' Oh ! I am so glad to see you ; I have been so frightened that I
was obliged to sit on Willie's bed till you came in.' I was in the room by
this time, and inquiring into the cause of fear. M. said, 'After I put the
children to bed I sat down in the nursery to my work, when I heard some-
one coming up the stairs. I went to the door, and on the first landing by
your room, I saw, as I thought, Madame N. carrying something heavy.
I felt that she ought not to be out of her bed, and I called to her in
French : " Je viendrai vous aider," running down the stairs to where I
supposed she was. When I got there it gave me a queer sensation to find
no one. However, I said to myself, it was a shadow, and made myself go
back to my work. I had scarcely seated myself when a voice called :
" May, May, May " (the name my children called her). I got up, went to
the door, and seeing someone, ran halfway down the stairs to meet the
woman, when a terrible dread came upon me, and I rushed back to the
nursery and sat 011 one of the little beds, feeling that being with even a
sleeping child was better than being alone.' My husband laughed at her,
told her the vin ordinaire was too strong ; that she had been dreaming,
&c. We none of us thought much of it, till the first post from England

vii.] CASES AFFECTING BOTH SIGHT AND HEARING. 583

brought M. a letter to say her mother had been confined, and she and the
child had died within an hour after. Then we all felt convinced that M.'s
mother had been able to come and see her daughter.1

" HARRIET WALSH."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Walsh says : —

" At the time, I am sure she did not connect the appearance with her
own mother, nor did she recognise the voice. All she told us was that
she thought it was Madame Nyo. May's mother was very much the same
sort of person in appearance as Madame Nyo,2 without there being any
likeness ; they were about the same age, figure, and position in life. We
only connected May's story with her night of terror, when she received the
news from England."

[We cannot now ascertain the exact times of the apparition and of
the death ; but they probably occurred within a few hours of each other.
If, as seems nearly certain, the call of the Christian name, as well as the
visual experience, was a hallucination, that point is decidedly in favour of
the telepathic explanation of the case.]

(636) From Mr. Louis Lyons, 3, Bouverie Square, Folkestone.

" 1882.

" Madame Laramea Espe'ron, of Nantes, since dead, told me the
following some 16 or 17 years ago. She had an only son, fond of fishing,
which recreation he indulged in during the forenoon, and had been for
some years most punctual to be home for dinner at 12 o'clock. One day
he did not make his appearance at the usual hour. His mother opened
the window to look out for him, when she heard him call her several times,
and on turning round she saw her son coming through the wall, and
making his exit through the opposite wall.3 An hour or so afterwards, a
message was brought to her, that her son fell over the pier an hour ago,
and was drowned. Madame Espe'ron was a most worthy woman, and told
me her story bathed in tears. A mother weeping for her only son tells
no lies."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Lyons adds : —

" Madame Espe'ron was in mourning for her son when she told me the
sad story. I was very intimate with her, and my daughter, who went
with me to Nantes, was a frequent visitor at her house."

(637) From Mr. John Williams, 99, Wellington Road, Dudley.

"April 7, 1884.

"On December 3rd, 1849, my mother died, between the hours of
9 and 10 p.m. Her sister, living from 3 to 4 miles away, saw her on the
top of the staircase, she having just gone to bed, at the same time that
mother expired. ' Such was the effect, that she sent a messenger next
morning to see if her sister was really dead."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Williams states that his mother died at"
The Hays, Old Swinf ord, Worcestershire. His aunt (Sarah Piper, formerly

1 See p. 48, note.

2 As to the mis-recognition, compare cases 170, 171, and 676.

3 See Vol. i., pp. 432 (note)-and 573.

584 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

of Netherton, Dudley) is now deceased. He heard of her experience
from his sister, Mrs. Raybould, of Stourb ridge (aged 14 at the time), who,
he says, " well remembers aunt coming in the afternoon, after the return
of the messenger, and telling father and her as to seeing her sister at the
top of the staircase. I was not at home when she (aunt) called, so I heard it
from my sister, or father, when I got home the same evening of aunt's
visit. My sister well remembers what her aunt said, and to-day
(February 16, 1886) she told me that aunt said, mother called her by
name (Sarah) 3 times;1 so she not only saw, but heard her.

"J. W."

The Register of Deaths confirms Dec. 3, 1849, as the date.

Mrs. Raybould writes, on April 7, 1886 : —

" I remember well the night of December 3, 1849, it being the night
of my dear mother's death, which happened about 9.40 p.m. On the
following day my aunt, mother's sister, Sarah Piper, came to our house in
the afternoon, and said she knew that my mother was dead, for she saw
her at the top of the stairs in her bedroom, and heard her call ' Sarah,'
3 times. This, from the time she stated as having seen and heard her, was
as near the time mother died as possible.

"MARY RAYBOULD."

In answer to an inquiry, Mr. Williams says that his aunt knew
nothing of her sister's illness— puerperal fever after a premature confine-
ment— " so could not be expecting her death."

(638) From Mrs. Say Thomson, 47, Albany Villas, Brighton.2

"February, 1886.

" I will relate the incident that occurred to my late husband, Colonel
Thomson, as I was with him at Brussels at the time. Colonel Thomson
was with the King of the Belgians, at Brussels, and his brother, the Count
de Flandres — and, I believe, very few others in the room. He was writing
down instructions from the king about the volunteers that Lord Heaton
and he had brought over. Someone leant over him, and said, 'Your
brother wants you ' ; he answered, ' Tell him I am now engaged with the
king, and impossible to leave him ; but ask him to wait.' Being very
much engaged writing down the king's directions, he said he half looked
round, and saw a man in his volunteer uniform ; he hardly gave him a
glance, but said he would come as soon as he could. Directly he was
disengaged, he went into the ante-room, and asked the many he knew
there if they had heard anyone asking for him, as he heard his brother had
arrived in Brussels. Of course all questions were asked, privately, and on
parade, but all wearing his uniform denied having called him. More-
over, the two sentries who were on guard, outside the room the king
was in, said it was impossible that any volunteer had passed in without
their knowledge. In the course of a few days he heard of his brother's
death.

" I cannot tell you day and date of Mr. John Sinclair Thomson's

1 See p. 229, note.

2 A very incorrect version of this occurrence was given in No. 13 of "Volunteering,
Past and Present," by " Ancient," in the Volunteer Service Review, July 1st, 1882.

vii.] CASES AFFECTING BOTH SIGHT AND HEARING. 585

death, but I have no doubt my sister-in-law can supply you with correct
information on that point. Colonel Thomson was commanding the Tower
Hamlets Rifle Brigade, consisting of three corps ; but at Brussels Lord
Heaton and he took over, I think, at least 800 volunteers to Belgium.
Colonel Thomson died the next year, June 8th, 1870. He was at Brussels
in August or September the year before. I never heard of my husband
seeing or hearing anything supernatural l before.

" W. S. THOMSON."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Thomson writes on March 7th, 1886 : —
" The hour my husband heard the voice, telling him his brother waited
for him, was noon. The news of his brother's death did not come until
the next day. But whether the hours of hearing the voice and the death
occurred at the same time I am unable to say. We hardly ever spoke of
it, as it was not a subject Colonel Thomson cared to discuss."

We learn from Miss Kate Thomson, a daughter of Mr. John S.
Thomson, that her father died at about 8 p.m., on Saturday, Sept. llth,
1869, at Aitechuan House, Ardrishaig, Argyleshire ; and we have
verified the date by an obituary notice in the Scotsman.

Mr. Podmore writes, February 9th, 1886 : —

" I called on Mrs. John Sinclair Thomson, of 18, Gloucester Walk,
Campden Hill, W., on the 9th February, and heard the narrative, as here
given, from her. Her husband's death was quite unexpected, — the illness
being only a sudden attack of gout ; and she thinks it is certain that
Colonel Thomson did not even know that his brother was ill. She herself
did not see Colonel Thomson in the interval before his own death in the
following June ; but shortly after that event she heard, for the first time,
of the above occurrence from a Dr. Walker, of Peterborough, who had
received an account of it from Colonel Thomson himself. She has sub-
sequently heard the full details from Mrs. Say Thomson."

[If the letter announcing the death really arrived at Brussels, from
Scotland, on the day following Colonel Thomson's experience, the death
must clearly have preceded that experience by more than 12 hours. But
Mrs. Thomson admits that she has no distinct recollection of the interval
that elapsed before the arrival of the letter, and indeed spoke of it, in the
first letter in which she mentioned the occurrence to us, as " a few days " ;
and though her son, Mr. J. F. Alison Thomson, of Croxton Lodge,
Clarendon Street, Leamington, mentions having heard from his father
that the letter arrived "on the following morning after the warning," he
adds a sentence showing that he conceives this to be tantamount to saying
that the days of the death and of his father's experience were the same ;
and his evidence, therefore, cannot be held to decide the point.]

(639) From Mr. Williams, Summerfield, Rhyl.

" November 23, 1885. •

" About 46 years ago my father went to a place near Utica, in America,
leaving my mother with myself, then six years of age, a younger brother,
and a baby sister at home at Bontuchel, in North Wales. In his corre-

1 See p. 48, note.

586 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

spondence with my mother he described the country to which he had gone,
and intimated his purpose to return home and sell his property at Bontu-
chel, and take us all out to live there. We all slept in a two-bedded room,
with windows facing each other. My brother and I were together in one
of the beds, asleep, before my mother came to bed with the baby. After
putting the lights out she heard a noise resembling the napping of a bird's
wing against the windows. It was a moonlight night. She got up and
looked out of the window, but seeing nothing returned to bed. Immediately
after this she saw my father standing in the room, dressed in his usual
clothes, and looking at her and at the child lying beside her. As soon as
she caught his eye he turned his back upon them, and looked at us as we
lay in the other bed. My mother called him by his name, and got out of
bed to go to him, fully believing that it was he, but he instantly vanished.
So terrified was she now that she left the house the next day, and went to
her parents, who lived at Ruthin, taking us with her. About six weeks
after this removal, a letter came sealed with black, written by a friend of
my father's, detailing the circumstances of his illness, of his death and
burial, and specifying the time of his demise. My mother had carefully
recorded the time of her vision, and now found that, allowing for difference
of longitude, it corresponded exactly to that of his death. I remember my
mother's sudden removal from Bontuchel to Ruthin, and heard her
repeatedly relate the particulars here given. I cannot say that I heard
her relate the particulars before she received the letter ; but I remember
distinctly that she said she gave them to her parents, at the time of her
removal, as the reason why she came to them so suddenly. My brother and
sister, still living, can corroborate this testimony.

" W. WILLIAMS."

[The brother's and sister's corroboration has not been received in time
for insertion.]

The following is the only instance known to me in which
telepathy seems actually to have aided the course of the law. The
story is remote, but we have the contemporary evidence ; and there
seems no reason to doubt that a coincidence of the kind alleged took
place.

(640) The Buckingham, Bedford, and Hertford Chronicle for Nov. 1,
1828, states that on Saturday, Oct. 25, 1828, William Edden, market
gardener (called Noble Edden), was found dead on the road between
Aylesbury and Thame, with several ribs broken. He was discovered by
Mr. Taylor, miller, who was returning from Aylesbury, and gave the alarm.
At the adjourned inquest, on Nov. 5, a verdict of murder was returned
against some person unknown.

The Buckingham Gazette of August 22, 1829, gives an account of the
apprehension of a man named Sewell, who had stated in a letter to his
father that he knew who had killed Edden. He accused a man named
Tyler, and both were tried at the Aylesbury Petty Sessions, August 22,
before Lord Nugent, Sir J. D. King, R. Browne, Esq., and others. On
the first day of the examination, Mrs. Edden, wife of the murdered man,
gave the following evidence : — " After my husband's corpse was brought
home, I sent to Tyler, for some reasons I had, to come and see the corpse.

vii.] CASES AFFECTING BOTH SIGHT AND HEARING. 587

I sent for him five or six times. I had some particular reason for sending
for him which I never did divulge. ... I will tell my reasons if you
gentlemen ask me, in the face of Tyler, even if my life should be in danger
for it. When I was ironing a shirt, on the Saturday night my husband
was murdered, something came over me — something rushed over me — and
I thought my husband came by me. I looked up, and I thought I heard
the voice of my husband come from near my mahogany table, as I turned
from my ironing. I ran out and said, ' Oh, dear God ! my husband is
murdered, and his ribs are broken.' I told this to several of my neigh-
bours. Mrs. Chester was the first to whom I told it. I mentioned it also
at the Saracen's Head."

Sir J. D. King : " Have you any objection to say why you thought
your husband had been murdered ? " " No ! I thought I saw my husband's
apparition and the man that had done it, and that man was Tyler, and
that was the reason I sent for him. . . . When my neighbours asked
me what was the matter when I ran out, I told them that I had seen my
husband's apparition. . . . When I mentioned it to Mrs. Chester I
said : ' My husband is murdered, and his ribs are broken ; I have seen him
by the mahogany table.' I did not tell her who did it. Mrs. Chester
answered, I was always frightened, since my husband had been stopped
on the road. [The deceased Edden had once before been waylaid, but was
then too powerful for his assailants.] In consequence of what I saw, I
went in search of my husband, until I was taken so ill I could go no
further."

Lord Nugent : " What made you think your husband's ribs were
broken ?" " He held up his hand like this " (holds up her arm), " and I
saw a hammer, or something like a hammer, and it came into my mind
that his ribs were broken."

Sewell stated that the murder was accomplished by means of a hammer.
The examination was continued on August 31 and September 13; and
finally both prisoners were discharged for want of sufficient evidence.
Sewell declared that he had only been a looker-on, and his accusations
against Tyler were so full of prevarications that they were not held
sufficient to incriminate him. The inquiry was again resumed on February
11, 1830, and Sewell, Tyler, and a man named Gardner were committed
for trial.

The trial (see Buckingham Gazette, March 13, 1830,) took place at the
Buckingham Lent Assizes, March 5, 1830, before Mr. Baron Vaughan,
and a Grand Jury ; but in the report of Mrs. Edden's evidence, no mention
is 'made of the vision.

Sewell and Tyler were found guilty, and were executed, protesting their
innocence, on March 8, 1830.

Miss Browne, writing to us from Farnham Castle, in January, 1884,
gives an account of the vision which substantially accords with that here
recorded, adding : — ,

" The wife persisted in her account of the vision ; consequently, the
accused was taken up, and, with some circumstantial evidence in addition
to the woman's story, committed for trial by two magistrates, my father
Colonel Robert Browne, and the Rev. Charles Ackfield. The murderer
was tried and convicted at the Assizes, and hanged at Aylesbury.

588 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" It may be added that Colonel Browne was remarkably free from
superstition, and was a thorough disbeliever in ' ghost stories.' He came
home, and said, laughing, ' We have had a ghost called in, in court to-day.
We shall see how the story is confirmed ! ' '

The following narrative may be compared to the arrival examples
in Chap. XIV., § 7. But if we found a difficulty, in any case, in
regarding the mere fact of impending arrival as the occasioning con-
dition of a telepathic transference (p. 96), the difficulty is intensi-
fied when the arrival is of someone with whom the percipient is
in daily association, and who has only been away an hour or two
on ordinary business. I think, therefore, that the chance that the
experience here described was purely subjective is too appreciable
to allow the account to be numbered as evidence.

A letter written to the Spectator by the late Rev. W. L. Clay, of
Rainhill Vicarage, under date Feb. 9, 1869.

" On a Sunday afternoon, about 30 years ago (the precise date I cannot
recollect), my mother and eldest sister, then about 8 years old, were
sitting together in the dining-room. No one else was in the house except
a younger child and his nurse, and another servant ; all the rest of the
family were ... at church, and my father, John Clay, of Preston,
was at the gaol. He was due home in about half an-hour, it then being
nearly 4 o'clock. The afternoon was very wet, but very still, the rain
pouring in torrents, but with an even, steady downpour. While sitting
thus my mother heard footsteps approach, and presently some one opened
and passed through the yard-door. (This yard-door faced on the road.
The nearest house was full 500 yards distant, and any one
going to the front door would have to pass this yard-door, the dining-
room windows, another window, and then turn round the corner of the
house, through a gate in the garden.) She was a good deal startled, more
especially as this door, according to domestic regulations, ought to have
been locked. She roused herself to listen with all her might, and heard
distinctly — all the more distinctly as the house was so quiet — the person
who had opened the yard-door enter the house by the back door, traverse
a passage in the basement storey, open the door at the foot of the back
stairs, mount the back stairs, and enter the front hall. But by this
time she was completely reassured, for she had recognised my father's
footsteps. He put his umbrella into the stand, with a rattling noise, took
off" his top-coat and shook it, and then came through the inner hall into
the dining-room. The hall-door and dining-room door were both ajar, so
she easily heard all this. He went up to the fire, and resting his elbow on
the mantel-piece, and one foot on the fender, stood there for a few
moments drying himself. At length she said, ' You must be very wet ;
had you not better go and change your clothes at once ? ' ' Yes,' he re-
plied, ' I think I had better do so,'1 and so he turned, left the room, and
went upstairs to his dressing-room.

" As he did not come down again for more than half -an-hour, my

1 See p. 460, second note.

VIL] CASES AFFECTING BOTH SIGHT AND HEARING. 589

mother followed him to see what was the cause of his delay. To her
astonishment, she found his room empty, and no sign of his having been
there. She searched all through the rooms on the same landing, but
could not find him, and at length came down puzzled and frightened ; but
trying to calm herself with the supposition that, although she had not
noticed his departure, he must have left the house again for some purpose
or other. But while she sat there, still flurried and uneasy, she heard
again the same footsteps approaching, the same opening of the yard-door,
the same entrance by the back door, the same traversing of the passage
downstairs, and mounting by the back stairs into the hall, the same
putting down of the umbrella, and shaking of the coat, and then my
father came into the room, walked up to the fire, and placed his elbow
on the mantel-piece, and foot on the fender, just as he had done before.
' Why, where have you been ? ' exclaimed my mother, as soon as she could
speak after the first gasp of amazement. ' Been ? ' he said, turning
round and noticing for the first time her excitement and distress, ' I have
been to the gaol as usual.' ' Oh ! you know that's not what I mean. I
mean where have you been since you came in by the back door just as
you have done just now, rather more than half-an-hour ago ? ' 'I don't
understand you at all ; I have come straight from the gaol and have never
been in the house since I left this morning.' ' Oh, it's too bad playing
jokes like this to frighten me, when you know I am not well.' (My
mother was in delicate health at the time.) And then, in answer to his
amazed questions, she poured out the story I have told you.

" I believe the incident happened exactly as I have narrated. I have
heard my father tell the story repeatedly, and he was singularly accurate
and truthful. My mother's account, too, tallies precisely with his. My
sister cannot now, I think, distinguish between what she recollects
and what she has so often heard related. But my father at the time
questioned her as to what she had heard and seen, and her account
was that ' I saw mamma get up suddenly, and go into papa's dressing-room,
and then she went into all the rooms upstairs as if she was looking for
something, and then she came down and looked as if something was the
matter, but she wouldn't answer me when I asked her what it was.'

" When my mother told- her story my father instantly recollected that
as he left the gaol the thought occurred to him, when he saw how heavy
the rain was, that if he found the yard-door unlocked he would go in that
way — a thing that he very seldom did — to avoid going round the corner to
the front door, and the thought having once occurred he mentally
rehearsed the circumstances of his entrance — doing in spirit precisely what
he afterwards did in the body. The distance from the gaol to our house
at East Cliff was rather more than two miles, and . . . this corresponds
with my mother's ' rather more than half-an-hour.'

"W. L. CLAY."

Mrs. Clay, widow of the Rev. W. L. Clay, and a friend of Professo
Barrett's, writes on 24th September, 1883 : —

" I have more than once heard the story related and discussed in tny
mother-in-law's presence by her husband. There is no doubt she firmly
believed in the vision. My impression is that he thought it had been
a very vivid dream. « jj_ jt CL.A.Y."

[CHAP.

CHAPTER VIII.

RECIPROCAL CASES.

THE following specimens, or possible specimens, of this rare type
seem worth presenting, though for the most part far from complete
from an evidential point of view.

(641) From a clergyman in Yorkshire, who desires that his name may
not be published.

"January, 1885.

" The following experience took place nearly 25 years ago, but there
is no doubt of its correctness in every detail. I became acquainted with
a young lady in London, who, I may say without vanity, fell violently in
love with me. There was a strange fascination about her which attracted
me to her, but, although very young, I was far from reciprocating her
affection. By degrees I discovered that she had the power of influencing
me when I was away from her, making me seem to realise her presence
about me when I knew that she was some distance away ; and then that
she was able, when I saw her, to tell me where I had been and what I
had been doing at certain times. At first I thought that this was merely
the result of accident — that some one had seen me and reported to her —
until one day she told me that at a certain hour of the day I had been
in a drawing-room, which she described, when I knew there had been
no chance of collusion, and that no one could have told her of my visit
to the house.

" She then told me that when she began intently to fix her mind on
me, she seemed to be able to see me and all my surroundings.1 At first
she fancied it was only imagination, until she saw by my manner that
what she described had really taken place. I had several opportunities
afterwards of testing this power, and found she was correct in every
instance.

" I need scarcely say that when I had satisfied myself of this, I kept
out of the way of such a dangerous acquaintance. We did not meet
for about 10 years, and had drifted so widely apart as to lose sight of
each other. One day I was walking with my wife on the West Cliff at
Bamsgate, when a strange feeling of oppression came over me, and I was
compelled to sit down. A few minutes afterwards my old acquaintance
stood before me, introducing me to her husband and asking to be intro-
duced to my wife.

1 See Vol. i., p. 268.

viii.] RECIPROCAL CASES. 591

" We met several times while they stayed at Ramsgate, and I learned
that she had been married for some years, and had several children ; but
I have seen nothing of them since, and have no wish, even if I had the
opportunity, of renewing the acquaintance. No reference whatever was
made to the past, and I did not learn whether she had still the strange
power she formerly possessed."

This may probably have been a reciprocal case, though we cannot
now ascertain whether the impressions which suggested to each of
the two parties the other's presence were simultaneous. The only
other case in our collection where a prolonged course of reciprocal
action is alleged to have occurred is the following.

(642) From Miss L. A. W. (the narrator of case 140), whose only
reason for withholding her name from publication is that she is sure that
her family would object to its appearance.

She begins by saying that when she was 19 or 20, she had a spell of
indifferent health, caused, it was thought, by over-study. During this
time, from March in one year till June in the next, she was much troubled
at intervals by singular dreams, which she recorded in a note-book, and
also described to one of her sisters. The main feature in these dreams
was the appearance of a particular person. " I was not in love, nor indeed
had I been ; and certainly no feeling but that of a mysterious repugnance
(and at the same time an inability to avoid or escape from the
influence of the person of whom I dreamt) actuated me. He was
someone I had never in all my life wittingly seen, though I had reason to
think afterwards that he had seen me at a Birmingham musical festival.
On that occasion I had apparently fainted, and it was attributed to the
heat and the excitement of the music. I hardly knew if it were or not.
I only knew I felt all my pulses stop, and a burning and singing in my
head, and that I was perfectly conscious of those around me, but unable to
speak and tell them so. To return to my dreams. I always knew as I slept
when the influence was coming over me, and often in my dream I com-
menced it by thinking, ' Here it is, or here he comes again.' They were
not always disagreeable dreams in themselves, but the fascination was
always dreadful to me, and a kind of struggle between two natures within
me seemed to drag my powers of mind and body two ways. I used to
awake as cold as a stone in the hottest nights, my head having the queer
feeling of a hot iron pressing somewhere in its inside. I would shiver and
my teeth chatter with a terror which seemed unreasonable, for there was,
even in the subjects of my dreams, seldom anything wicked or terrifying."

The dreams ceased after a course of medical treatment. In the next
year but one Miss W. was visiting in Liverpool. " I had enjoyed two or
three good dances, and was sitting out one, by the lady of the house, when
not suddenly, but by degrees, I felt myself turning cold and stony, and the
peculiar burning in my head. If I could have spoken I would have said,
' My dreams ! my dreams ! ' but I only shivered, which attracted the
notice of my companion, who exclaimed, ' You are ill, my dear. Come for
some wine, or hot coffee.' I rose, knowing what I was going to see, and
as I turned, I looked straight into the eyes of the fac-simile of the being

592 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

who had been present to my sleeping thoughts for so long, and the next
moment he stepped forward from the pillar against which he was leaning
behind the lace curtain, and shook hands with my companion. He
accompanied us to the refreshment room, attended to my wants, and was
introduced to me. I declined dancing, but could not avoid conversation.
His first remark was, ' We are not strangers to each other. Where have
we met ? ' I fear I shall scarcely be believed when I say, that (setting
my teeth, and nerving myself to meet what I felt would conquer me, if I
once submitted in even the slightest degree) I answered that I never
remembered meeting him before, and to all his questionings returned the
most reserved answers. He seemed much annoyed and puzzled, but on
that occasion did not mention dreams.

" I took an opportunity of asking my sister if she remembered my
description of the man of my dreams, and upon her answering ' Yes/
asked her to look round the rooms and see if any one there resembled him,
and half-an-hour later she came up, saying, ' There is the man, he has.
even the mole on the left side of his mouth.' "

Miss W. subsequently met this gentleman at almost every party she
went to. " He was sometimes so gloomy and fierce at my determined
avoidance of any but the most ordinary conversation, that I felt quite a,
terror of meeting him. He frequently asked if I believed in dreams ; if I
could relate any to him ; if I had never seen him before ; and would say,
after my persistent avoidance of the subject, ' I can do nothing, so long
as you will not trust me. ' '

Miss W. says that she has several pages, in her note-book, of entries of
dreams in which she seemed to be accompanying her visitor in a flight
through the world.

" When conversing with him in the flesh, he asked me if I had ' ever
travelled.' I said ' No.' He showed surprise, and began to dilate on the
wonders of such and such a place or scene, all of which I felt sure I had
seen with him, and entered in my note-book. It was deeply interesting,
and I was totally absorbed in his recitals, time after time, when he
abruptly stopped, saying, ' But have you never had scenes such as these
before you ? ' and I replied, ' Yes, in my dreams I have.' Such, or similar
remarks, I know I have noted down, and his eagerness to make me admit
similar experiences was at times almost fierce. I had a great longing at
times to tell him everything, but an innate sense that by so doing I should
be as completely his slave and tool as I had been in dreams, always
stopped me."

The effort of these conversations was so exhausting to Miss W. that
she wrote home to get herself recalled — a fact which her strange acquaint-
ance seems to have intuitively divined, and for which he bitterly
reproached her. She has never seen him since. She says, in answer to-
inquiries : — " You are right in your conjecture that he inferred [ ? implied]
he had seen me in dreams. He often talked as if he were perfectly aware
that I knew it, but that I would not go beyond a certain limit in
admitting anything." She adds that her sister remembers all the circum-
stances— the dreams, their frequency, and the correct description of the
man subsequently met ; but we have not been able to procure the sister's
written confirmation. Miss W. says that she cannot spare the time to
make extracts from her diary for publication.

VIIL] RECIPROCAL CASES. 593

[If the details here are quite accurate, it would be reasonable to explain
the case telepathically. But it is possible to suppose that the dream-
figure assumed the distinctness which made it seem the counterpart of the
real figure, only after the real one was seen ; and that Miss W. herself led
the conversations in the directions where they seemed to confirm her
dream-experiences. Without an independent account from the gentleman
himself, the interpretation of the case must remain dubious ; and as Miss
W. is unwilling to mention his name, no more can be done. Should the
account ever meet his eye, it is to be hoped that he will communicate
with us.]

In the next case it is impossible to tell how closely the two
experiences coincided.

(643) From Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, 31, Queen Anne Street, W.

" February 10th, 1886.

" I send you a well-authenticated dream of my daughter-in-law, Mrs.
Alfred Wedgwood, with the vouchers. You will see that she told it
immediately after the occurrence to Mrs. K., and to me a day or two after-
wards, on her return to Queen Anne Street. I have a strong recollection
that it was on that occasion that she explained her noticing the ring, by
saying that in her dream the stranger leant his hand on the bedside as he
stooped over her. She expressed great confidence that she should know him
again if ever she saw him, and I told her to let me know if ever she did.
However, she never mentioned to me the fact of her having fallen in with
him that autumn, and she only mentioned it incidentally, when she was
with me last Christmas, as a matter well-known to me.

" If I had known it at the time, we might perhaps have been able to
ascertain how far the dreams were synchronous. It is not likely that they
were absolutely so, as hers was in the afternoon.

" H. WEDGWOOD."

" In June, '84, I went to Folkestone to look out for a house, and slept
for a night or two at the West Cliff Hotel. The second day I was there,
being a good deal tired, I went up in the afternoon to my room, locked
the door and fell asleep upon my bed, having undressed myself and merely
covered myself with the sheet, it being a warm day. After a while, I was
startled out of sleep by dreaming in a very lively way that a gentle-
man, whom I had never seen before, was stooping over me. He was
dressed in a dark grey tweed suit ; he wore on his little finger a cornelian
ring, and a small cameo pin which was a veiled figure. I observed that one
of his eyes drooped a little. There were a number of Zulus standing
behind him. When he bent down towards me he put out his hand and
said, ' Poor thing, you seem tired.'

" The impression was so vivid that I jumped off the bed to see whether
the door could have come open, but I found that it was locked as I had left it.
I got up and dressed, and went to tea with Mrs. K.; I told her my dream,
saying I was sure I should recognise the man if ever I saw him. Having
found a suitable house, I returned to my father-in-law's in Queen Anne
Street, and told him my dream, as I had done to Mrs. K. In the middle
VOL. H. 2 Q

594 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

of August we moved to Folkestone, and not many weeks afterwards, as I
was going down the Military Hill leading from the camp to Sandgate, I
met the gentleman whom I had seen in my dream, wearing the same
clothes. He stopped, and looked at me, and said, ' I think we must have
met before.' I said, ' Yes ' ; then introduced myself, and told him of my
dream. He wore the same pin, but not the ring. I called his attention
to it. He said he had not worn the cornelian ring for some years, as
he preferred his brother's, but that he had been looking at his old ring.
He had dreamt of seeing me lying down in a white gown. The day he met
me, I had on a white dress. He also told me he had been at the Cape, and
once belonged to the Mounted Rifles when first established.

" M. R. WEDGWOOD."

" I believe I did not hear of my wife's dream until after she had met
with the gentleman she had seen in her dream. Very soon after that
meeting I was told the story. « A A WEDGWOOD."

Thinking it possible that Major M. had unconsciously noticed Mrs. A.
Wedgwood's appearance during the days when she was in Folkestone in
June, I asked her how she was dressed during that short stay. She
replied : —

" At the time I was down here for the two days, I wore a black silk
gown, as I well remember my friend Mrs. K. admiring it when I went
and drank tea with her. I told her of my dream at the same time."

Mrs. K. writes : —

" December 28th, 1885.

" I remember quite well the circumstance you allude to. Mrs. Alfred
Wedgwood told me about it the same evening, when she was sitting with
me at Meadowbank, but I think she said she saw this vision of a man
looking at her, not in a dream, but on suddenly awaking from sleep, and
that he vanished as she looked at him. She told me that she particularly
noticed a stud or breast-pin he was wearing, and that during the short
time the figure was visible she saw other figures in the background, like
Zulus with their spears passing behind him. This, at the time, made us
wonder if the room at the West Cliff Hotel she was then using had been
at any time occupied by someone who had died in the Zulu War. Some-
time after this, Mrs. Alfred told me she had seen an officer at Shornclifie
who resembled the man of her vision, and that he was wearing a pin
just like the one she had observed, and she wondered who he was.
I do not remember that after this we ever spoke of the matter again ; and
I never heard that she had afterwards met him to speak to, or that he had
told her that he had had a corresponding vision or dream of her.

" M. A. K."

The following account is from Major F. F. M. : —

"February, 1886.

" As nearly as I can recollect, some time in June, 1884,1 I met Mrs.
Wedgwood coming down the Military Road from Shorncliffe Camp. I had

1 Mr. Wedgwood says, " It must have been in August or September.

VIIL] RECIPROCAL CASES. 595

a confused idea that I had met the lady before, and therefore turned to
look at her. Mrs. Wedgwood asked me some question, and introduced
herself, when, in conversation, I remarked that some time previously I had
dreamed I had seen her, and that she was dressed in a white gown.

" Mrs. Wedgwood replied that she also had dreamed she had seen my-
self, and described the dress I wore, and also a scarf-pin and ring that I
possess. The latter she could not possibly have seen, as I had not worn it
for some years, and consequently it was locked up in a secret drawer in my
chest. The accurate description of the ring and pin seemed to me to be
very remarkable. « j1 j1 ]y[ "

In answer to inquiries, Major M. writes, on Feb. 18, 1886 : —

(1) "I feel sure I had never seen Mrs. Alfred Wedgwood before I
met her coming from Shorncliffe Camp, after the dream you refer to,
and I had no reason for connecting the dream with her [i.e., at the time
that it was dreamt].

(2) " I do not think my dream was sufficiently vivid to enable me to
recognise the features of the lady.

(3) " The dream occurred, I believe, in the second week in June, 1884.
" I may say that I did not look upon my dream as at all peculiar, and

should have thought no more of the circumstance had not Mrs. Wedgwood
informed me of her dream, which I thought very remarkable, inasmuch
as she described accurately some articles of jewellery belonging to me, which
she could not possibly have previously seen."

He adds that Mrs. A. Wedgwood was correct in saying that he had
served for many years in South Africa ; but that he had not recently
returned from that country.

Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood writes on Feb. 2, 1886 : —

" Major M. says that when he saw Mrs. A. Wedgwood in her white
gown, he instantly recognised her by her figure. The date of her dream was
the 13th June, which she fixes by something about a photograph."

[It is impossible here to be sure that Major M.'s sense of having seen
Mrs. A. Wedgwood before he met her was really due to his dream. But
if the case is not reciprocal, it is at any rate strongly suggestive of
telepathic clairvoyance on Mrs. A. Wedgwood's part.]

The next example may, no doubt, have been an accidental coinci-
dence ; but both experiences seem to have been of an unusual kind,
unlike ordinary dreams. If telepathic in character, the case may
not improbably have been reciprocal, without — it will be observed —
suggesting anything of the nature of clairvoyance. Each percipient
has the impression of the other as present in the percipient's own
environment.

(644) From Mrs. White, 10, Hope Terrace, Walham Green, S.W.

" 1883.
" On one occasion my husband [since deceased — for many years con-

VOL. II. 2 Q 2

596 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

ductor of the Ballymena Observer] complained of a slight indisposition ;
but being very averse always to the attendance of a doctor, he desired
me to see that some cooling drink was left in his bedroom, and that we
should all retire as usual. I occupied a room on the floor above him, and
after seeing that everything necessary was left on his dressing-table, and
everything comfortable and as he wished, I, at his urgent request, went to
bed, and being particularly fatigued fell into a deep sleep ; in which state I
became acutely conscious of the condition I had left my husband in, and
mindful of my own secret resolve to visit him during the night and see if
he had taken his drink or if he slept, &c., though I had studiously avoided
telling him so, lest he should think I was making a fuss. I was quite
conscious of all this in that peculiar way we see and know during sleep.
I also seemed to know I was in a deep sleep, and I longed to burst my
bonds and carry out my intention. Simultaneously with this wish, I now
became aware of my husband's presence at the door of my room, then of
his presence filling the chamber and slowly and solemnly crossing to the
bed where I lay. In that flash of conscious thought which made me
aware of this, I thought he must be very ill and come to reprove me for
this torpor of sleep that still so enchained me that I couldn't speak to him,
though longing with all my heart and soul to do so. This all, swift as
thought, passed while he seemed to bend over me as if to find did I sleep ;
then with the same slow, solemn presence filling the room, again he passed
away. Then, with one shrill cry, I burst the suffocating bonds that held
me, and my maid, who slept in the next room, was beside me at once.
She asked, was I frightened ? I said not at all, but to follow me to her
master's room ; that I had intended seeing to him through the night, but
had fallen fast asleep and neglected to do so.

" When I cautiously entered his room, the maid behind me, I found
him awake and a keen, almost reproachful look on his face. I dismissed
the maid, and then explained what a heavy sleep I had just awoke from,
which had prevented me coming sooner, &c. ' Will you tell me,' he now
inquired, ' what object you have in trying to conceal from me that you
were here a few moments ago 1 ' I then fell on my knees, and assured him
that I had not risen from my bed until this present moment, and that it
was owing to a strange, silent, and secret visit from him that so disturbed
and alarmed me, that I was there now. ' Ah,' he said, ' something like
this happened to me before, but this is the most remarkable experience of
all — because happening to each of us at the same time.' He then narrated
how, a few minutes before, I had stolen, as it were, up to his side, arranged
the clothes, kissed him on brow and cheek, and then glided away ; that
my visit had a soothing effect, and that he was consequently irritated at
my appearing to forget it, when I came the second time."

[In conversation, Mrs. White particularly described to me the sense of
entrance and of the movement of the presence. There was light enough for
her to have seen any visible figure, but she saw nothing. She also described
the effect upon herself, before she reached his room, as very overpowering,
depriving her of the power of speech. Her vivd voce account agreed in
every detail with the above account which had been written about a year
previously ; and she gave me an impression of accuracy. As an instance
of her unwillingness to believe marvels, she told me how incredulous she

VIIL] RECIPROCAL CASES. 597

had been as to the genuineness of experiments in hypnotism which her
husband used sometimes to carry out.]

I will conclude this chapter with two cases which, as reported,
seem to have been collective as well as reciprocal.

(645) From Mrs. T., who does not wish her name to be published.
The account was written in January, 1879.

" I have myself had an exceedingly interesting experience of the
apparition of the living, viz., my own appearance at the supposed death-
bed of my sister, when we were 3,000 miles apart. She was attended on
this particular night by another sister, who distinctly saw me go into the
room, and lean over my darling young sister. The latter was too ill to
speak, but she whispered, ' Mary is here ; now I am happy.' I ought to
mention that my elder sister is not given to vision, and is, indeed, a very
practical, matter-of-fact person ; but she has always declared that she saw
me from my knees up, l and that the very dress was plain to her, too.

" At this time I was just recovering from my confinement with my son,
who is nearly 17. He was between four and five weeks old, when, one
night, I fell asleep thinking how much I should like to see this sister. I
knew of her illness, and that she was not likely to recover, and of her
intense desire to see me. Between us the most tender attachment had
always existed, and it was thought that her illness was much increased
through her grief at our separation.

" On the night referred to, I had a most vivid dream of seeing her, in
a bed not in her own room, and of seeing my other sister in attendance.
I leaned over her and said, as I thought, ' Emma, you will recover.' I
told my husband that I had been home when I woke, and my impression
that she would recover. This dream comforted me very much, and from
this night there was a change for the better in my sister, and she gradually
recovered from what was supposed to be an incurable illness. When we
came to compare dates, we found that my dream, and my appearance to
my two sisters, occurred at as nearly as possible the same time. I was so
life-like to my younger sister that she thought I had really arrived on a
visit ; but, as I said before, to my eldest sister I was shadowy below my
knees, but perfectly natural in appearance. She afterwards remembered
that I did not notice her as I passed into the inner room, although in my
dream I saw her, nor did I seem to see anything but the one object of my
love."

Mrs. T. wrote to us, on Oct. 3, 1883 :—

" Neither of my sisters wrote me, but a member of the family to whom
the occurrence was told on the following morning. Unfortunately I have
not kept this letter, and cannot date the time, except from my son's birth,
which took place on the 4th March, 1862. I changed my bed, still
keeping the same room, when he was a month old, and it was within a
night or two of making this change that I had my dream. When the
letter came, which was like a repetition of my dream, I went back in my
mind to the time (not more than three weeks before), and was myself
satisfied that the times were coincident. It was nearly 10 years after,

1 See p. 33, note.

598 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

before I had an opportunity of talking with my sister of the occurrence,
which was only one of several very startling things connected with iny
younger sister's illness, and I found we agreed in all substantial things. I
found them both disinclined to talk of what had happened during Emma's
illness, and, indeed, their memory of all the circumstances of my manifes-
tation was less clear than mine."

Mrs. T. is unable to communicate with her family respecting this case,
as they all have an extreme dislike to the subject. In conversation, she
explained that she had left America about nine months at the time of this
vision, and that her sister recognised her as wearing a print dress of a very
decided blue, which she had left behind her in America.

She has further answered the following questions : —

Did Mrs. T. dream of herself as in the blue dress ?

" I cannot now remember. My impression is that I did not recollect
my dress on waking."

Had the sisters ever seen the blue dress 1

" Yes. I had worn the dress in the morning during the previous early
summer time." l

Was the invalid sister really in a room not her otvn ? And if so was its
arrangement, " inner room," &c., really represented in the dream 1

" My sister was not in her own room, but in a room on the ground floor
(an inner room), exactly as I had seen her in my dream." 2

Had Mrs. T. ever seen the room before ?

" Yes."

Mr. T. cannot remember any of his wife's experiences in detail ; he

" I am unable to recall the particular circumstance to which you refer.
This may be due to the fact that for several years previous to, and since,
the date referred to, my wife has related to me numerous remarkable
incidents in her experiences, together with their subsequent verification.

« "Y^T rp "

[It is unfortunate that the evidence here is second-hand from the side
on which the more striking experience occurred. If that experience is
correctly recorded, the fact that two percipients shared in it is a strong
indication that it was telepathically produced. The proof of the
reciprocality of the case depends greatly on the detail in the dream as to
the changed room, on which it is impossible entirely to rely, in the absence
of a written note made before the actual fact was known.]

(646) From Mr. J. Cotter Morison, 30, Fitzjohn's Avenue, N.W.

"June 18th, 1883.

" My mother and grandmother were together in the dining-room of
their house in the Isle of Wight, occupied on some domestic matter which
made the exclusion of chance visitors desirable. A sudden knock at the
door caused my grandmother to hasten to it with a view to taking the

•M i MI gee Vol. i., pp. 540-6, and 569-70. The dress, it will be seen, was one which the
sisters in America would be specially likely to associate with Mrs. T. 's aspect, since she
had worn it a good deal when she was last with them ; while there is no reason to suppose
that it had any prominence in her memory.
2 Compare case 465.

viii.] RECIPROCAL CASES. 599

stranger into the drawing-room. The knock was heard by both mother
and daughter. On opening the door with the least loss of time possible,
my grandmother was surprised to find not only no one there but no one
even in the long corridor which led to the dining-room. My mother dis-
tinctly remembered the look of astonishment in her mother's face as she
returned from the door. Nothing more was said on the subject, but in a
short time afterwards a letter was received from London from my grand-
mother's sister, or rather her family, saying that she (the sister) had been
most seriously ill, at death's door indeed, but was now a little better, and
wished my grandmother to come and see her. The latter went up to town
and found her sister still very ill, but slowly recovering. After the
mutual endearments natural to such an occasion, my grandmother said : —

" Do you know, such a strange thing occurred, exactly at the time, it
seems, when you were supposed to be dead or dying.'

" ' I know what you are going to say,' said the other. ' When I was
in the trance which was mistaken for death, I thought I went to your
house in the Isle of Wight and knocked at your dining-room door. You
opened it instantly and looked much affrighted at not seeing me or any
one, though I saw you.'

" The singular point in the story is the anticipation by the one sister of
what the other sister was going to say.

" No theory or inference was ever deduced by my relations from the
circumstance, and it was only mentioned as an odd coincidence by them
and their friends, who, as well as my mother, have often told me the story.

" JAS. COTTER MORISON."

Mr. Morison writes of his grandmother : —

" She was a person of a strong understanding, as I have often heard
from people who knew her personally. She had an aversion to what she
called superstition, belief in ghosts, &c. ; so the facts of the story were
unwelcome to her rather than otherwise."

Though the sound here seems to have corresponded with a
distinct impression of the agent's, there is no conclusive proof of
reciprocality, as her sense of visiting her relatives' house may have
been purely subjective. At the same time, the idea of knocking at a
door and having it opened, yet being oneself invisible to the person
who opens it, appears so unlikely a one to occur even to a dreaming
minil, that the hypothesis of telepathic clairvoyance on the agent's
part seems (as the facts stand) eminently defensible. It must be
noted, however, that the description of this side of the occurrence
comes to us at third hand.

[CHAP.

CHAPTER IX.

COLLECTIVE CASES.

§ 1. OF the collective cases which remain to be presented, the large
majority, like the cases in Chap. XVIII. above, are waking affections
of sight and hearing. I will begin, however, with three outlying
instances, of which the first had no sensory element at all, the second
is a dream-case, and the third concerned the sense of touch only.
They agree in the fact that the two percipients were not in each
other's company at the time of the experience (see Chap. XVIII., § 2).

(647) From Mr. Charles Ede, Wonersh Lodge, Guildford, a medical
man, to whom the incident was related by both the percipients. The
account was sent to Professor Barrett on Aug. 29, 1877.

" Lady G. and her sister had been spending the evening with their
mother, who was in her usual health and spirits when they left her. In
the middle of the night the sister awoke in a fright, and said to her
husband, ' I must go to my mother at once ; do order the carriage. I am
sure she is taken ill.' The husband, after trying in vain to convince his
wife that it was only a fancy, ordered the carriage. As she was approach-
ing her mother's house, where two roads meet, she saw Lady G.'s carriage.
When they met, each asked the other why she was there. The same
reply was made by both. ' I could not sleep, feeling sure my mother was
ill, and so I came to see.' As they came in sight of the house, they saw
their mother's confidential maid at the door, who told them, when they
arrived, that their mother had been taken suddenly ill, and was dying, and
had expressed an earnest wish to see her daughters.

" The foregoing incident was told me as a simple narrative of what
happened, both by Lady G. and her sister. The mother was a lady of
strong will, and always had great influence over her daughters.

"CHARLES EDE."

Writing on June 25, 1884, Mr. Ede says, " Both Lady G. and her
sister are dead, although at the time of my writing the account the former
was living." He cannot fix the date of the occurrence. He communicated
the names in confidence.

(648) From Mr. R. S. Pengelly, 33, Ingestre Road, Stafford, who
first published the narrative in a magazine. On Feb. 26, 1884, he
wrote to us to confirm it, and to supply the names of the parties.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 601

Mr. Pengelly narrates that, some time in the years 1863-1866, his
father, then unmarried, went on a voyage to Colombo as mate of the
' Adela,' belonging to Messrs. Cobbold and Co., of Ipswich. Some weeks
after his departure, his fiancee, Anne Symons, who had been looking out
for a letter from him, had a vivid dream of an Eastern seaport. Lying to
the left of the picture she was startled to see a vessel, which she instantly
recognised as the ' Adela,' of which her father was captain, and which she
knew well. There on deck were several Orientals, lightly clad, at work,
and by their side was James Pengelly. Suddenly she saw him walk a step
forward, and the next moment he was struggling in the waters. She was
in agony, but strange to say, the excitement did not at once awake her,
and she saw him throw up his hands and sink, and he appeared no more.
At this point she awoke, deeply impressed with the realistic nature of her
vision. Strange to relate, however, the next night she went through the
same series of mental tortures, her lover fell, struggled wildly, but was
drowned. When she arose that morning, she confided her dreams, and the
anxieties they had aroused in her breast, to her aunt.

" Several days later, Anne received a letter from her lover's mother,
who, it happened, was also her aunt, and who, with her husband, lived
about 130 miles away, in another part of the country. The letter, to her
intense surprise, asked whether any news had been received of the arrival
of the ' Adela ' at Colombo, the writer giving as a reason for her solicitude
for her son a dream which she had had a few days before (giving the date).
She also had dreamed on two consecutive nights that she had seen her son
fall overboard and rise no more, and so powerfully had she been affected
by the visions that after the repetition she had the next morning written
the letter received. The days upon which Mrs. Pengelly had dreamt of
her son's death were the very ones upon which Anne herself had been so
agitated. They could only wait and pray, and after some weeks their
anxiety was relieved, and their prayers rewarded, by the receipt of a letter
from James, announcing his arrival at Colombo a few days before the date
of the letter, after a long and tempestuous passage. He went on to tell,
to Anne's great astonishment, how narrow an escape he had recently had
from drowning. ' The day after our arrival,' he wrote, ' I was standing on
a plank from the hatchway to the bulwarks, watching the coolies discharg-
ing her. While so standing I almost unconsciously stepped forward, and
the plank, one end of which was resting on the bulwarks, at once tipped
up, and I was in the water. Being unable to swim, my danger was great,
and I had sunk once before the boatswain with a boathook caught me, and
held me up till they brought the boat around.' Most wonderful to relate,
a comparison of dates showed Anne that it was on the very day of her
first dream that her lover's life was so nearly lost, and his mother was no
less surprised than Anne. However, ' all's well that ends well.' James
came home, and he and his cousin were married."

Mrs. Pengelly, the mother of James Pengelly, writes : —
" 10, Gloucester Place, Littlehampton.

"April 19th, 1886.

" I am sorry to say I cannot remember the exact date of the dream
only that, as near as I can recollect, it was in or near 1864. My son was

602 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

then mate in the ' Adela,' the ship of his uncle, whose daughter he after-
wards married. She dreamt, one night, that her cousin was climbing
from a boat into the ship, when he slipped his foot and fell in under the
ship ; when they took him up, he was nearly dead. She wrote to tell me
her dream, and by that I found she had dreamt the same dream the same
night as I had. When my son came home, upon questioning him, I found
that he had fallen into the water at Colombo, and, as near as he could tell,
the same day as I dreamt he did. My daughter-in-law, I am sorry to say,
is now dead; if she were living she would be able to tell you more particulars.

" E. PENGELLY."

[Mr. Pengelly justly draws attention to the fact that a dream due to
apprehensions of danger and disaster would not be very likely to take the
form of "drowning in a quiet harbour " ; but the amount of detail in his
narrative is more than can be safely relied on, in the absence of written
notes. It will be seen that Mrs. Pengelly senior's account of her daughter-
in-law's dream does not exactly agree with Mr. Pengelly's. Mr. Pengelly
kindly tried to obtain for us an account of the accident from his father,
but found that " he, a plain sea-captain, had little recollection of what
happened 20 years ago, during his absence."]

(649) From the papers of the late Psychological Society. The original
document is in the handwriting of the late Mr. Serjeant Cox. No names
are given, and the MS. bears no date.

" The following remarkable case is taken from the lips of the parties
to whom it occurred, and for whose veracity I can vouch.

" J. P., wife of Colonel P., says : 'In July, 1871, I was at Weymouth,
sleeping with my daughter. I was wakened in the night by a cold kiss
upon my lips. I concluded that my daughter had kissed me, and wondered
much why her lips were so corpse-like. I fell asleep again, and on the
following morning, on awaking, I asked my daughter why she had kissed
me, and what made her lips so cold. She said that she had not done so.
Soon after this conversation a messenger arrived to say that my mother,
who was in another house in Weymouth, was very ill, and requested my
immediate attendance. I had left her on the previous evening in perfect
health, so that I had no sense of alarm for her to account for a mental
impression. I found her seriously ill, and she died in three weeks.

" ' Two days before her death, I received a letter from my sister, Mrs.
C., who was on a voyage to America, written from the ship, then off
Halifax, dated the day after the night on which I had felt the cold kiss,
in which she said, " I am sure there is something wrong with mother ; she
is either dead or ill ; for last night I felt a cold kiss on my lips, as I lay in
my berth." As far as we could afterwards trace, this had occurred to both
of us almost at the same moment. My mother and sister had been ex-
tremely attached. They were then parted for the first time.'

" This narrative of Mrs. P. was confirmed to me by her daughter, who
was sleeping with her on the night in question, to whom she had made the
inquiry why she had kissed her, and what had made her lips so cold.

"EDW. W. Cox."

[If this record is accurate, and the coincidence was more than a very
curious accident, there still would be a doubt as to the agency. It seems
so improbable that hallucinations, originating in a telepathic impulse

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 603

from the mother, should independently take the same very rare form in
each daughter's experience, that I should certainly prefer to suppose one
of these experiences to have been in some measure the source of the other.
It is eminently a case where it is difficult to derive the form of the impres-
sion from the original agent's (the mother's) mind, as even if she thought
of kissing her daughters, she would not think of the kisses as cold or
corpse-like. See Vol. I., pp. 539-40.]

§ 2. To pass now to the visual examples — I will first cite cases
where there is ground for supposing the hallucination, in its inception,
to have been more than subjective, and due to the unusual condition
of an absent person. And in accordance with the order adopted
before, in Chap. XVIII., I will begin with the few remaining cases
where the percipients were not in each other's company at the time
of their experience.

(650) From Mrs. Forsyth Hunter, the narrator of cases 553 and 554.

" 1882.

Mrs. Hunter's husband had had a Scotch wet-nurse of the old-
fashioned sort, more devoted to him than even to her own children. Soon
after her marriage, Mrs. Hunter made acquaintance with this nurse, Mrs. •
Macfarlane, who paid her several visits during Mr. Hunter's absence in
India. In June, 1857, Mrs. Hunter, who was travelling to a health-
resort, confided to Mrs. Macfarlane's keeping a box of valuables. One
evening in the following August, Mrs. Hunter was entertaining some
friends ; but having occasion to return to the dining-room for a moment,
she passed the open door of her bedroom, and felt irresistibly impelled to
look in ; and there on the bed was a large coffin,1 and sitting at the foot of
it was a tall old woman steadfastly regarding it. " Returning to my
friends, I announced the vision, which was received with shouts of laughter,
in which, after a time, I joined. However, I had seen what I have de-
scribed, and, moreover, could have told the very dress the old woman wore.

"When my friends left, and I had paid my usual last visit to the
nursery, my nurse looked odd and distraite, and to my astonishment
followed me on to the landing. ' O ma'am,' she began, ' I feel so queer,
such a strange thing happened. At 7 o'clock I went to the kitchen for
hot water, and when I came out I saw a tall old woman coming down-
stairs, and I stopped to let her pass, but, ma'am, there was something
strange about her, so I turned to look after her. The hall door was wide
open, and she was making for it, when in a moment she melted away. I
can swear I saw her, and can tell you her very dress, a big, black poke
bonnet and a checked black-and-white shawl.' " This description of the
dress exactly corresponded with what Mrs. Hunter had herself seen.

Mrs. Hunter laughed the matter off, and did not even think of*
connecting her own vision with the nurse's. About half an hour after-
wards, when in bed, she heard a piercing scream from her little daughter,
aged 5, followed by loud, frightened tones, and she then heard the nurse

1 As usual, the form of the hallucination can be paralleled in the purely subjective
class ; see Vol. i., p. 503.

604 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

soothing the child, " Next morning little E. was full of her wrongs.
She said that ' a naughty old woman was sitting at the table and staring
at her, and that made her scream.' Nurse told me that she found the
child wide awake, sitting up in bed, pointing to the table, and crying out,
' Go away, go away, naughty old woman ! ' There was no one there.
Nurse had been in bed some time, and the door was locked.

" My child's vision I treated as I did her nurse's, and dosed both.
However, a day or two afterwards, I received a letter from Mrs. Mac-
farlane's son, announcing her death, and telling me how her last hours
were disturbed by anxiety for my husband and his family. My nurse, on
being told the news, exclaimed, ' Good Lord, it was her I saw that night,
and her very dress ! ' I never ascertained the exact hour of her death.
My letter of inquiry and condolence was never answered, though my box
was duly sent to me."

Mrs. Hunter writes to us that, after reading this account in the
Fortnightly Review (where it was first published), the " little E." of the
story wrote to her, " I well remember my part of that story." Mrs.
Hunter adds, " I can truly say that she had never been spoken to about it
all these years."

We find from the obituary of the Glasgow Herald that Mrs. Macfarlane
died on August 31, 1857.

(651) From the late Mr. B. Coleman, who wrote as follows to the
Editor of the Spiritual Magazine : —

" 48, Pembridge Villas, Bayswater.

"January 14th, 1861.

"I was recently staying at the Victoria Hotel, Southport, kept by
Mr. Salthouse, an old and respectable inhabitant of that town. [I learnt
that] Mr. Salthouse was a firm believer in apparitions, founded on an
incident which occurred in his own family. I accordingly asked Mr.
Salthouse to tell me the particulars, and he related the following story : —

" ' Some years ago my eldest son, Thomas, shipped as a sailor on a
voyage to India. After he had been absent a month or two, I was sur-
prised one summer morning to see him standing by my bedside in his
sailor's dress. I extended my hand to greet him, and inquired the cause
of his unexpected return. The figure remained for an instant mute and
immoveable, and vanished from my sight.

" ' Excited and perplexed by this unlooked-for incident, I rose and
prepared to make my usual visit to my farm, which is two miles distant
from Southport, reasoning myself into the belief that I had been under a
delusion. On reaching the farm my servant, William Ball, who still
resides there, asked me if Master Tom had returned home. I said, " No ;
why do you ask ? " " Well," he said, " I certainly saw him cross the
farmyard early this morning. I ran to open the gate and could not see
where he had gone, but I am as sure as I live that I saw him in his
sailor's dress." This statement corroborating my own experience of the
morning, I made sure that some disaster had befallen my son, and in due
time this proved to be the case. He had died that very day and hour, of
dysentery, on board ship, before reaching Bombay.'

" BENJAMIN COLEMAN."

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 605

A son of Mr. Salthouse, to whom we sent the account, writes to us
as follows :— « 91j Railway Street, Southport.

"June 12th, 1884.

" From what I can remember I believe the account is correct. I
showed this paper to my brother-in-law, and he told me that my father
always said so. l I have heard Ball [now deceased] tell the tale many
times. "JOHN SALTHOUSE."

Later, Mr. Salthouse writes to us that he finds that Mr. Thomas Salt-
house's ship left Liverpool on June 3, 1846, and that he was taken ill
between Bombay and Hong Kong, on Nov. 23. We learn from the
General Register of Shipping and Seamen that he served as third mate on
the ship " Inglewood," of Liverpool, from June 3 to Dec. 13, 1846, on
which latter date he died at sea. The words " summer morning " and
" before reaching Bombay " in the above account are therefore incorrect.

The following case is a sort of comedy of errors. Only two of the
four hallucinations which it includes represented the absent agent ;
as to the two which did not, I shall hazard no further supposition
than that their coincidence with the others was not accidental.

(652) From Mrs. Fagan, Bovey Tracey, Newton Abbot, the narrator
of case 617. "1883.

" Captain Robert Fagan, late of the Bengal Artillery, while in charge
of the bridge of boats at Lahore, was in the district on the river collecting
boats. One morning, during his absence from home, his eldest boy, of
about 6 years old, seeing his mother just dressed for breakfast in a
coloured muslin, begged her to take it off and put on a black dress, saying,
' Because papa is dead.' The mother, after diverting his thoughts for a
short time, said, ' Shall I put on a black dress now, Charlie 1 ' ' Oh, no,'
he answered, ' papa is not dead now,' and ran away.

" On leaving her room, she was met by the head nurse, a Scotch-
woman, with the inquiry if she had heard from the master that morning.
When told his usual letter had not come, she said, ' Something very un-
canny has happened to him, for looking out of the window just now, I saw
Annie, the under-nurse, and the gardener go up to master's favourite rose-
tree and gather a flower, and before she could have got in from the garden,
I found her in the night nursery, which she had never left, finishing
bathing the children.'

"Not thinking much of this, Mrs. Fagan passed on to the breakfast-
room, where she expected to find her visitors, Captain and Mrs. Reveley.
Not doing so, she went to Mrs. R.'s room, whom she found still at her
toilet, for which unpunctuality Mrs. R. apologised, saying she had had a
dreadful fright, having seen Mrs. Fagan standing in front of the chest of
drawers, who, when asked how she had come unobserved into the room,
turned round and then deliberately vanished through the chest of drawers
and the door behind it.2

1 The form of expression here would convey the idea that Mr. J. Salthouse had not
himself heard of the incident from his father. But in conversation I learnt from him that
he had heard his father mention it several times, in a manner which showed him to have
been much impressed by it.

a See Vol. i., p. 432, note. The present case is not one of those there referred to.

606 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" This third strange remark led Mrs. Fagan to relate all three at the
breakfast-table to Captain Reveley. She could not help observing how
unlike his usual manner was his brusqueness in cutting short the conver-
sation, as soon as he had heard all particulars. Five days passed without
any information — private or official — from Captain Fagan ; but at the end
of that time he arrived home looking ill, and saying that, on the morning
of which we have been speaking, he was with difficulty resuscitated from
drowning, the boat in which he was having capsized. This was naturally
taken as the solution of the mystery. Captain Reveley, turning to Mrs.
Fagan, said, ' I must apologise for my brusqueness of manner that morn-
ing, but I feared to alarm you by seeming to attach any importance
to what had happened, and lest I should be induced to tell you of the
greater fright I had myself had than any of you. For, Fagan,' addressing
the Captain, ' as I passed from your office, where I had been reading with
the Moonshee, and going through the drawing-room, I distinctly saw you
sitting in your usual chair.' "

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Fagan adds : —

"As to the story of those who saw my husband and me and had
impressions that he was in danger, it is now so long ago that my son
could hardly remember it. Captain Reveley, of the Bengal Infantry, who
saw him, his wife, who saw me, and the two women, the Scotchwoman, by
name Ann Kenny, and the Irishwoman, by name Annie Robertson, both
then wives of privates in the Bengal Artillery, I fear, could hardly be
traced as witnesses ; but I give you their names.

"It occurred at Anarkullie, Lahore, Punjaub, about the year 1850."
In conversation with Mrs. Fagan, Professor Sidgwick learnt that Mrs.
Reveley did not connect the apparition of Mrs. Fagan with Captain Fagan.
Mrs. Reveley, who is now living near Montreal, has been lately applied to
for an independent account ; but no answer has been received up to the
time of going to press.

(653) From Mrs. Heckford, 6, The Crescent, Minories, E.

"1884.

" When I was a child 6 years old, my mother died after a short illness,
in Germany, and one of her two unmarried sisters came from Ireland to
take charge of my two elder sisters and of me, leaving my other aunt in
the country house which had for years been their home. Within a
few days of a year from the death of my mother, my eldest sister, a re-
markably healthy child, died of scarlatina, also in Germany. When I
was a girl in my teens, my surviving sister and I were one day talking
about apparitions, in the spirit of absolute disbelief in such appearances
which had been carefully fostered by those who educated us, including
my aunt ; when, somewhat to my astonishment, she recounted to us the
following story.

" One night, she said, about the time of my mother's death, she had
retired to rest, but was not asleep, when suddenly she saw the figure of
my mother, attired in her usual white dressing-gown, sitting at the foot
of her bed and gazing steadfastly at her. My aunt said that she was
aware that, owing to the fact of my mother being delicate, and no letter
having arrived very lately from Germany, she was anxious about her, and

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 607

that hence, on seeing the figure, she decided that it was the result of
some mental disorder, and resolutely closed her eyes so as to avoid any
further delusion. After keeping them shut for some time, she re-opened
them, and found that the figure had disappeared. She said that having a
horror of encouraging superstitious fancies, she took no note of the day
or hour, and having resolved not to tell the sister who then lived with
her, so as not to excite or frighten her, had never broken her resolution.
She admitted, however, that when she heard of my mother's death a
short time after, it struck her that the coincidence was remarkable.

" Many years after this conversation, when my aunt had passed away,
and we two girls were living with her sister, the conversation turned upon
' ghosts.' The company consisted of my Aunt S., her adopted daughter
(a cousin of ours), and myself. After remarking that she did not believe
in ghosts, my Aunt S. told us she would recount to us a very remarkable
experience she had once had. She said that one night, about the time of
my mother's death, she had retired to rest, but was not asleep, when
suddenly she saw my mother, in her usual white dressing-gown, sitting at
the foot of her bed ; that she said to the figure, ' Oh, M., how are you 1 '
(or words to that effect) and that the figure replied, ' Quite well, but I
shall come back for Jane.'1 The figure then disappeared. My Aunt S.
said that she resolved not to tell her sister, for fear of exciting her, and
that she had taken no note of the day or hour, not wishing to encourage
a superstitious feeling ; but that on hearing of my mother's death, she had
been struck by the strangeness of the coincidence. Even then, she said,
the words regarding my sister Jane appeared unmeaning, but were start-
lingly explained when the child soon followed her mother.

" My Aunt S. never recounted this experience to her sister, who thus
passed away in ignorance of the phenomenon of a double apparition.
Years passed without any allusion to these singular recitals between my
sister, my cousin, and myself ; we were thoroughly incredulous of the
possibility of ' ghosts ' in general when we heard them, and Spiritualism
was to us, for long afterwards, a subject merely for mirth ; neither does
either my sister or my cousin profess a belief in Spiritualism now ; yet
they are both ready to attest the truth of my version of a story, the
principal witnesses to the veracity of which have passed beyond the reach
of inquiry.

" SARAH HECKFOED.

" A. GOFP [her sister, of 22, Palace Road, Upper Norwood].

" S. C. ELAND [her cousin]."

Mrs. Goff tells us that the occurrence took place at Christmas, 1845.
Her impression had been that the words heard were in answer to a direct
question of her aunt about the children.

§ 3. In the following far larger group the percipients were
together.

(654) From Professor J. E. Carpenter, Leathes House, Fitzjohn's
Avenue, N.W., an Associate of the S. P.R. "April 6th 1884

" I do not know that my story is likely to be very satisfactory to you
1 As to the interchange of remarks, see p. 460, second note.

608 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

because I am unable to give precise dates, and have no means of access to
any memorandum made at the time. It is possible that an account which
I wrote soon after the occurrence may be preserved [see below], and if you
should desire further particulars I may be able to procure them for you.

"The manifestation took place in the early summer of 1868 or 1869,
but I cannot now recall which. I lived then in lodgings in Clifton. The
mistress of the house was a nervous, highly excitable woman, lame, having
one leg shorter than the other. One morning, after breakfast, she ap-
peared much excited, and then informed me that the evening before she
had seen a ghost. The circumstances, as far as I recollect, were these.
Miss Reed (the landlady) was standing about 7.30 in the kitchen (lighted
by a window opening into a small area), in front of the kitchen fire. The
maidservant was standing at the table with her back to the window,
peeling some onions for my fellow-lodger's supper. Suddenly, Miss
Reed said to the girl, ' Oh, Eliza, what's that ? The girl replied,
' Please'm, I saw a man go round the table and out through the door.'
Just then the street-door bell rang. The kitchen door was closed, and had
not been opened. The girl's statement expressed exactly what Miss Reed
herself had seen. When the bell rang the girl exclaimed, ' Please, miss,
I'm so frightened, I daren't go upstairs.' The landlady went up, and
on coming down again questioned the girl about the figure. They had
both seen only the upper part, above the edge of the table, and it was
naked. I asked Miss Reed if it resembled anyone she knew. ' I
should have said it was like my uncle,' -she answered, ' but he is a very
stout man, and this was very thin.' She then detailed to me another
curious incident in her own life, of which I have now forgotten the
particulars ; but I got the impression that she was too excited to give
me precise facts about remote events, though her story about the night
before was quite coherent and distinct.

" The sequel was curious. Either that day, or very shortly after-
wards, she was telegraphed for to go to her uncle, who was dangerously
ill and had been repeatedly calling for her. At the time of the mani-
festation she had no idea that he was in any but his usual health.
He lived, I think, at Berkeley, in Gloucestershire. She went imme-
diately, and on her return a few days after told me what a shock she had
felt, on going into the sick room, at seeing her uncle reduced to the
attenuated form of the man who had presented himself in the kitchen.1

" I have been sorry since that I did not separately question the servant,
but I had reason to think her so little sensible that it did not seem worth
while. It was only after Miss Reed's return from her uncle's sick bed
that the incident seemed to have any importance.

"J. ESTLIN CARPENTER."

In a subsequent letter, Professor Carpenter says : —

" Unfortunately no letter can be found with any account of the actual
incident. All that has been discovered I have transcribed on the opposite
page. The details I had quite forgotten. The passage does not say that
Miss Reed went to her uncle's house, but I feel sure that she was sum-

1 See Vol. i., pp. 554-6.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES, 609

moned thither ; indeed, the particulars here recorded could hardly have
been learned by her anywhere else. I fear this is a lame and impotent
conclusion.

[Copy.]

" ' Clifton, March 12th, 1869.

. . . " ' I send you the sequel of my ghost story — if it is to be
considered as a sequel at all. I don't know whether I told you that I
asked Miss R. if her ghostly visitor resembled anyone she knew, and she
said the only one she could think of whom he was like was her uncle, but
he was stout and the appearance was thin. At the end of last week she
heard, unexpectedly, that her uncle a few weeks before had been taken
seriously ill, that he had been exceedingly reduced, and that he was then
lying at death's door. (To-day I hear that he is dead.) Further, some
small property that he had he had formerly left to Miss Reed. Some
little while ago, however, an aunt of Miss R.'s came to " take care of him,"
and induced him to alter his will in her favour, at any rate so far as life
interest was concerned. When he fell ill, he became much agitated at the
injustice he thought he had done Miss R., and expressed himself with
strong self-accusation, though, like many weak people, he put off a second
alteration from day to day. Whether one of these fits of distress took
place at the time of the so-called appearance, and there was really any
connection between them, cannot now be traced, and the story must be
left with its possibilities unsolved.'

" P.S. — Miss Reed gave up her house some 10 years ago or more. She
was afterwards reduced to considerable distress by sickness, &c. I have
certainly heard nothing of her for 8 years, and have quite lost all trace of
her."

(655) From Mrs. Mainwaring, of Knowles, Ardingly, Hayward's
Heath, (the narrator of case 370,) who sent us a less detailed account in
August, 1884. "March 14th, 1885.

" My aunt, Margaret Saulez, and my mother, then Mary Saulez, slept
together ; and the rules of the house were strict. One most forbidden
thing was noise in bedrooms, or talking after going to bed. But the two
young girls one night went on chattering and laughing after they were in
bed, and suddenly the door opened and my grandmother came in. She
just came and looked at them sorrowfully, as if she was vexed, and without
speaking left the room. I do not remember, at this moment, whether they
spoke to her then ; however, they felt so grieved at her look and silence
that they both jumped out of bed and followed her quickly to her door,
but found it locked, and she would not answer — as they thought — when
they begged her to forgive them. My grandfather woke, and found her
by his side in a deep swoon.1 They sent for the doctor, and he said that
he was only just in time to save her life, as she had evidently been in that
state some time ; and a few hours after a child was born.

" This is the story familiar to me from my mother's lips since my child-
hood, and I am as sure of its truth as one can be of anything one does not
know oneself. The elder sister, my aunt, died soon after.

" E. L. MAINWARING."

l See Vol. i., pp. 230-1 and 563, note.
VOL. II. 2 R

610 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

[Special circumstances, which Mrs. Mainwaring has explained to us,
prevent our applying to her mother for a first-hand account.]

(656) Received through the kindness of the Rev. Prebendary Sadler,
Rector of Honiton. The ladies concerned in the case were his great-aunt
and her daughter (who died in April, 1885). Writing in 1883, Mr. Sadler

says, " I took the story from Miss F n's own lips, questioning her closely

upon it. She is as clear and fresh in mind as myself. She has a very
accurate and retentive memory. I cannot say when I first heard the
account — very many years ago." In April, 1884, he added that the
account was taken down in writing " several years since."

" In the year 1819, Mrs. S r and [her daughter] Miss F n were

going into Leeds, down St. Peter's Hill, when Mrs. S r suddenly

stopped, and pointed out to Miss F n a man on horseback, riding

quickly, a little way before them, up the hill. She exclaimed, ' There is
Jonah S. ! How strange he looks ! He looks like a corpse. Ah, to think
of his riding out now, when we heard yesterday that he was dying of
fever ! ' The man then passed them on horseback without noticing them,
though he was well acquainted with them. They stood still, and looked
at him as he passed. His eyes looked fixed, as if, though open, they were
not looking at anything. He was riding quickly. They followed him
with their eyes, till they lost him at the turn of the hill some little way
behind them. He had on a light-coloured drab greatcoat, which he

usually wore. Miss F n thinks that he had no hat on, but is not

perfectly sure about that. They did not see him till he was nearly up to
them.

" They went into the town to Mr. S r's warehouse. Mr. S r

met them at the door, and before they could say anything to him, said,

'I have just heard that Jonah S. died at 2 o'clock to-day.' Mrs. S r

looked at her watch, and calculated that it was just at that time they saw
him pass."

We requested the parish clerk at Leeds to search for the date of the
death ; he wrote back implying that he had done so, but refused to send
the result except in combination with other information, offered on terms
which, though not unreasonable from his point of view, we could not accept.

[The case is too remote for reliance to be placed on details ; but the
fact (if correctly remembered) that the ladies were astonished at seeing
this particular person out riding, tells against the hypothesis of mistaken
identity, in So far as it implies that they gave him more than a hasty
glance.]

(657) From Mr. Leonard E. Thomas, Derrie Downs, St. Mary Cray.

"December 17th, 1883.

" A landlady of mine, Mrs. R., with whom I lived for years, and who
was one of the kindest of women — a thoroughly God-fearing woman, who,
I firmly believe, would scorn to invent or concoct any tale — related to me,
among other very peculiar experiences, the following : —

" She was a little girl of about 1 1 years, when her grandfather, who
lived a few streets away from them, was taken ill (I believe she said with
scarlet fever), and she was not allowed to go near the house. One after-
noon her grandfather (who was very fond of the child) wished to see her

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 611

very much, and she was taken to him. That night she was lying by her
mother's side in bed, and the door stood ajar with a light on the landing.
She was lying awake, when she heard the pat, pat, peculiar to a naked
foot, ascending the stairs. The form of her grandfather entered the room,
advanced to the bed, drew the curtain, and looked at them, and was gone.
She was trembling violently, and clung to her mother, who had seen it
too, and who said, ' Hush, child ! it is only your grandfather.' Her
mother then got up and struck a light, and dressed, saying, ' I fear some-
thing must have happened to your grandfather ; I had better go round
and see.' But the child begged her not to, as she would be frightened to
death. They waited, and about three-quarters of an hour afterwards a
messenger came round to bear the news of her grandfather's death, which
had taken place at that precise time."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Thomas adds : —

" I found out the present address of Mrs. B., and wrote to her, asking
her to be good enough to write me out an account of what she had once
related to me, at the same time stating for what purpose I wished it. I
extract from her reply that part of it which refers to the subject, and
which runs as follows : —

" ' I do not care in any way to enter into such matters. What I told
you, to the best of my knowledge, is true, but undoubtedly the impression
then made has been deepened by hearing mother speak of it ; and I always
think such things that we cannot account for in any way or understand
are best let alone.' "

[Details again cannot be relied on, the narrator having been so young
at the time. But the fact of the mother's subsequent references to the
incident favours the supposition that she herself shared the experience,
and that it was not a mere frightened dream of the child's.]

(658) From Mrs. Spenser (mentioned above, p. 575). The account
was copied for us by Mrs. Saxby, of Mount Elton, Clevedon, from a
private letter. „ 97> Railway Street) gOuthport.

"September 1st, 1871.

" My sister Elizabeth had a young friend staying with her, who shared
the same bed. They had ceased chatting, and were preparing for sleep,
when Elizabeth touched Henriette, saying, ' Look at that beautiful light ! '
Henriette exclaimed, ' Very beautiful, but what is it ? ' Elizabeth re-
plied, ' Oh, it is little Mary Stanger ! How exquisitely beautiful. She is
floating away,' and the vision passed.

" Early the next morning, she sent to Mr. Stanger's house, and learnt
that the dear child had died at the exact time she had seen the vision,
about 11 o'clock the previous night.

" The appearance was of the perfect child, enveloped in a soft cloud of
the faintest bluish light ;x so clear, and emitting or reflecting a light which
illuminated the whole exquisitely beautiful little vision ; but Elizabeth'
did not seem to know whether the light originated in the cloud or in the
lovely little figure. Henriette saw the light clearly, as well as Elizabeth.

" LUCY SPENSER."

1 Compare cases 210, 311, 315, and see Vol. i., p. 526, first note.
VOL. IL 2 R 2

612 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

An inscription on a tombstone at Keswick shows that Mary Stanger
died on May 24, 1829, aged 3 years and 8 months.

Mrs. Saxby tells us that the two percipients were the most intimate
friends of the child's mother. The child was a cousin of the lady — Mrs.
Browne, of Tallantire Hall, near Cockermouth — to whom Mrs. Spenser's
letter was written. In conversation with Mrs. Spenser, I learnt that she
herself heard of the vision on the morning after its occurrence ; also that
the child had been playing about the day before, and that its death was
due to loss of blood after an incision necessitated by a sudden attack of croup.

[We might suppose Henriette's experience to have been due simply to
Elizabeth's suggestion — which may have been the reason why Henriette
saw the light and not the figure. But if she really " saw the light clearly,"
we should thus be crediting verbal suggestion with a larger power of
evoking sensory hallucination in non-hypnotised persons than the evidence
on the subject seems at all to warrant (see p. 188, and Vol. I., pp. 512-3).]

(659) From the Theory of Pneumatology, by Dr. Johann H. Jung
Stilling (translated by S. Jackson, 1851), pp. 271-272. Stilling knew the
family of the narrator well, and vouches in strong terms for their truth-
fulness and probity.

" My brother J. H. C. was placed by a certain reigning prince as
doctor of medicine in A., and, on account of his peculiar abilities, the title
of Aulic Councillor was conferred on him. He resided there about four
years, towards the close of which he resolved, at the request of my late
father, to return to H. . . . We ardently looked for his arrival. . . .
I dreamt one night that I saw my brother on horseback, who said to me
that he was on a journey ; he would therefore give me several commis-
sions to my parents. I observed that his expression of countenance
appeared very strange, and asked him why he looked so blue-black in his
face 1 on which he made answer that it was occasioned by the new cloak
he had put on, which was dyed with indigo. On this he reached me his
hand, but whilst giving him mine, his horse began to plunge, which
terrified me, and I awoke. Not long after awaking, the door of my room
opened, someone came to my bedside, and drew aside the curtains, when I
perceived the natural figure of my brother in his night-gown. After
standing there a few minutes, he went to the table, took up the snuffers,
and let them fall, and then shut the room door again.1 Fear, apprehension,
and terror overpowered me to such a degree that I could not stay in bed
any longer. I begged my eldest sister, who also witnessed this scene, to
accompany me to my parents. On entering the chamber of the latter, my
father was astonished, and asked me the reason of my nocturnal coming.
I besought him to spare me the answer till the morrow, and only permit
me to pass the night in his room, to which he assented.

" As soon as I awoke in the morning, I was called upon by my parents
to relate what had happened, which my eldest sister confirmed. The
circumstance seemed so remarkable to my father that he noted down the
night and the hour. About three weeks afterwards my father received
the melancholy intelligence of my brother's decease ; when it appeared

1 There is, of course, no reason to suppose the impression that the door and the
snuffers were moved to have been anything but part of the hallucination. Cf. cases 659,
670, 676, 696, 698.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 613

that he had died the same night, and the same hour, of an epidemic
disorder, in which he had been suffocated, and his face had become quite
black. In the last days of his illness he had spoken continually of his
family, and had wished for nothing more ardently than to be able to speak
once more with me."

[If the singular blue-black appearance of the face was really a feature
of the dream, and was not " read back " into it after the truth was known,
the details about the dyed cloak well illustrate the subjective and falla-
cious embodiment which a percipient may supply to a telepathic impres-
sion. Another instance of a waking hallucination following at some
interval after a dream is case 701.]

(660) From Mr. Alfred W. Hobson, who sent the account from Cam-
bridge, under date March 22, 1864, to the Editor of the Spiritual Maga-
zine. Dr. Parkinson, of St. John's College, Cambridge, told us that he
remembered Mr. Hobson, a graduate of that College, as a sensible man.
The incident was related, in Mr. Hobson's presence, to the late Dr. Elliot-
son, by Mr. Joseph C. Robertson, Editor of the Mechanics' Magazine, who
died, we find, in 1852. We have not been able to trace his family.

"The two brothers [i.e., Mr. Robertson and a brother], both very
young at the time — I forget their exact ages — were in bed together at
their father's house, when they both saw the apparition of a lady to whom
their father (a widower) was engaged to be married. She died suddenly
that same night. The father was away from home, and not with the boys.
In this case it seems as if the dying lady had been desirous of appearing
to the father, and had come to his usual dwelling in the expectation of
seeing him ; but was disappointed, finding only his sons instead.1

" It so happened that Mr. Robertson himself died a few months after
the above dialogue, and the brother referred to in it was with me in the
same mourning coach at the funeral, and confirmed the story as told by
his deceased brother. The elder brother was, I believe, more alarmed at
the apparition than the younger."

(661) From a relative of our energetic friend and helper, Miss Frances
M. Peard, of Torquay, who procured us the account. She says that the
narrator (whose name we are not at liberty to publish) " is a remarkably
shrewd, sensible person." « 1883.

" In the decade of 184 — , one of Her Majesty's Regiments was lying
in a small town, well up in Upper Canada then, now Ontario. An
officer in that regiment, a captain, had from the first shown a great regard
for me, and had always been very devoted in his attentions ; but though I
liked him much, I could not say that I would accept him. In the spring
of 184 — , April, there were steeplechases got up by the garrison. Captain
— , who was a splendid horseman in every way, entered his horse. I
must mention that three or four years before, he had met with an accident
whilst riding a race, and winning. A man rode across the course.
Captain — - with his horse ran against him, was thrown, his horse*
injured, and his own leg broken, which caused him to have a limp or halt
in his walk ; but it did not prevent him being a beautiful waltzer, and a
perfect rider. He and I rode together continually, and he made me the
good horsewoman I was.

1 See p. 268.

614 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

" The day before the steeplechases above mentioned, Captain -
again spoke to me about my coldness, and told me he put his fate on this
race. If he won, would I say ' yes ' ; and if I decided thus, would I give
him a rose I had been nursing for this occasion ? I had not answered
then ; but if I wore my rose, and afterwards gave it to him whether he
won the race or not, it would be a reply to him. Well, I wore my rose.
The day was lovely. He won his race and rose and my acceptance ; for I
was one of a large family of daughters and my father not young, and I
really liked no one better. Of course he was delighted. My mother gave

a dance that evening to all our world. Captain engaged me for the

first three waltzes, in fact for several dances, and he was to be there early.
The dance began, and the dances, but my partner did not appear. I began
to feel annoyed ; and several of his brother officers looked at each other
smiling and began making jokes, &c. I said to mamma, ' How odd it is ;
he has never done such a thing before,' when I saw him walk into the
drawing-room, which was the ball-room, in his shell-jacket. The other
officers were in full dress as usual for balls, but he appeared in his usual
shell-jacket, mess-dress, with my rose in his buttonhole. He walked across
the room. I looking at him, he gave me a serious, earnest, yet devoted
and constant regard. He walked across the room in front of me, went
towards the window, and turned and went back out of the door, always
the limp, and the earnest steady regard. A waltz then began. I waited
for him ; he never came. Mamma said, ' How strange.' I went to the
other rooms. No partner there ; he was "not to be seen anywhere. One
or two others saw, Colonel W., Colonel T.,1 and one or two of his brother
officers. It spoiled my evening. Somehow I cared not to dance, and felt
low and depressed and hurt.

" Next morning, whilst we were at breakfast, papa came rushing in,
looking anxious and alarmed. He turned to me and said, ' S., did you not

say Captain was here last night ] You saw him.' Mamma and I

both said, ' Yes, certainly. He came into the drawing-room, walked across
to the window, his usual limp, and gave me such a serious look.' We
sprang up and said, ' Why do you ask ? ' I knew something had happened.
Papa said, ' He has not been in barracks all night. He rode out towards
B — — bridge to a farm about 5 p.m. His horse came back about 12 p.m.,
saddle soaked, and horse terrified.' Of course the whole garrison turned
out, and a general search was made. He was not found until the second
day, in the river. The flap of an overcoat showed where the body was.
He had put on his shell-jacket before starting, intending to return late for
mess. My rose was still in his buttonhole, and it was buried with him.
He came home, or intended doing so, by a deep ford, but the river had
risen suddenly, as it sometimes did. He was very late, and he tried no
doubt to swim the river, but did not succeed. It was supposed the horse
became frightened and knocked him on the forehead, as there was a mark.
His watch had stopped at about 10.15 p.m. Our parties began always
at 9 p.m., and closed at 1.30 a.m. He came, I seriously believe, to keep
his engagement to me, and to have his last long look of one he so loved ;
for he did so far more than I deserved.

1 These gentlemen are now dead. Their names were communicated to us, and we
have traced them in the Army List. The former was Deputy- Adjutant General in
Canada from 1843 onwards.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 615

" This is, I am glad to say, the only ghostly adventure I have ever had.
I am most matter-of-fact, and by no means subject to hallucinations of any
kind. On the contrary, I do not easily believe anything. That was the
only time in all my life that I ever had such a vision ; and nothing on
earth will ever make me believe that his spirit l did not come to see me
that evening and to keep his engagement with me — the peculiar limp, the
sad expression he rather had at all times, and the little crimson monthly rose.

" My sister A. remembers it. My mother always said how odd and
unaccountable it was. Colonel T., who is dead, never got over it. It gave
him a shudder even to speak of it. ' Bedad ! I don't like ghosts ! ' he often
said."

We have obtained from the Chief Librarian of the Toronto Public
Library a certified extract from the Toronto Examiner of May 26, 1841,
giving an account of Lieut, (not Capt.)2 W.'s death which differs from the
above in stating that his horse and dog returned to a farm-house near the
river " about 20 minutes after " 5 o'clock, when he had been last seen,
and " were brought into the town next day." He must therefore have
been drowned soon after 5. The detail about his watch stopping at 10.15
is thus probably incorrect, and the closeness of the coincidence has been
exaggerated.

(662) From an informant who desires that her name may be sup-
pressed, on account of the painful nature of the main incident. She is a
very reasonable and respectable woman, who expresses a strong contempt
for superstition, and is very sensible of the exaggeration and delusion
which enter into the vulgar beliefs in " supernatural " occurrences.

" 1883.

"When I was a young girl, I resided with my father, mother, sister
(named Ellen), and brother, at Clapham. My sister was in love with a
man, but my father and mother disapproved of the attachment, and sent
her to a friend in Brighton, to be out of the way. One evening during
her absence, between 6 and 7 o'clock, my mother and brother were talking
in the garden, at the back of the house. There was a wall at the bottom
of the garden, and a gate, leading into a large enclosed space used for
drilling, &c. ; this enclosure was locked in the evening, and was certainly
locked at the time in question. It was dusk, but not dark. My brother
John (a very active boy, but who happened to have just sprained his
ankle) looked over the wall, and suddenly exclaimed, ' Mother, there's
Ellen ! ' My mother looked, saw, and recognised the figure of my sister,
and said, ' John, go quick, and tell her to come in. Don't say anything
to your father.' John replied, ' I can't because of my foot ; call Mary.'
Mother then called me, and whispered, ' There's Ellen ; go and tell her to
come in ; her father shall not know anything about her coming back.'
My mother's idea was to get her quietly into the house, and send her
away again next day. I at once went through the garden-gate, and gave
her the message. I particularly noticed her dress, a dark blue peliss»,
buttoned, and the ribbon on her bonnet. A path led through the enclosure
to the outside gate, and she kept receding from me along this path, while

1 See p. 48, note.

2 The Chief Librarian writes (Aug. 26, 1886), " Captain is so common an appellation
in the country parts that the officer would most likely be addressed and known as such
among the ordinary people."

616 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

I followed more and more quickly, my mother and John watching us.
There was a deep dip in the path, and here I overtook her and tried to
catch hold of her, but seemed to catch nothing. She still receded, and at
last stood by the watch-box, close to the gate ; and here I repeated the
message to her, but as she made no answer, I went back.1 My mother
said, ' Why, where's Ellen ? ' I said, ' I left her by the gate.' My
mother replied, 'But you caught hold of her.' 'Yes,' I said, 'but I did
not seem to feel anything in my hand.'

"My mother turned very pale, and went into the house and told my
father, and both of them felt a conviction that some calamity had
happened. The next day the news came that my sister had thrown
herself into the sea and been drowned a little before 7 o'clock on the
preceding evening. This is the only occasion on which I have ever seen
an apparition."

[This is a case where it is specially important to distinguish the
central fact of a coincidence, which may be regarded as probably tele-
pathic, from the details which may have been subsequently imagined or
exaggerated. Even if the report is substantially correct, we have no proof
that the hallucination was spontaneously collective ; in the uncertain light,
it may possibly have been produced in the second and third percipients by
the suggestion of the first.]

(663) From Mr. C. Colchester, Bushey Heath, Herts.

"1882.

" Forty-two or three years ago, my father was with a detachment of his
regiment, the Royal Artillery, stationed at Montreal, Canada. He had
left his mother some months before in England, in an indifferent state of
health. One evening he was sitting at his desk, writing to her, when my
mother, looking up from her work, was startled to see his mother looking
over his shoulder, seemingly intent on the letter. My mother gave a cry
of alarm, and on my father turning round the apparition vanished.2 On
the same evening I and my brother (aged about 6 and 5 years) were in
bed, watching the bright moonlight, when suddenly we saw a figure, a
lady with her hands folded on her breast — neither looking to right nor
left, but with her eyes cast down in meditation, the head slightly bent
forward — walking slowly between the bed and the window, backwards and
forwards. She wore a cap with a frill tied under her chin, and a dressing-
gown of the appearance of white flannel, her white hair being neatly
arranged. She continued to walk, it seemed to me, fully 5 minutes, and
then was gone. We did not cry out, and were not even alarmed, but
after her disappearance we said to each other, ' What a nice kind lady ! '
and then went to sleep."

The children mentioned what they had seen to their mother next
morning, but were told not to talk about it. The news of their grand-
mother's death on that same evening arrived a few weeks afterwards.

" I may add," Mr. Colchester concludes, " that neither I nor my

1 This long pursuit of the phantasmal figure has occasional parallels in cases of purely
subjective hallucination. See, e.g., Vol. i., p. 499, note ; and compare the case on p. 630.

2 See p. 91, second note. Mr. Colchester believes, however, that his father saw the
apparition.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 617

brother had ever seen our grandmother until that evening, nor knew of
what my mother had seen till years after. The apparition I saw is as
palpably before me now as it was 40 years since."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death occurred on
March 31, 1840.

[Mr. Colchester tells us, in answer to the question whether he believes
his own remembrance to have been unbroken, that " the occurrence was
not wholly or even partially revived by my mother " ; and that the vision
is unique in his experience. But his extreme youth at the time makes
his first-hand recollection extremely doubtful. This objection does not
apply to his evidence as to his parents' share in the affair. If the facts
are correctly reported, this case belongs to the former group, of cases where
the percipients were apart, as much as to the present one.]

(664) From Mr. E. Butler, 7, Park Square, Leeds.

"October, 1884.

" During my clerkship I resided in lodgings, with a kind-hearted
Christian woman of great simplicity of character and reliable veracity. I
heard from her this story.

" Her brother was engaged in the wine trade, and spent a great part
of his time in Portugal and Spain. His two children were left in Leeds.
I am not sure whether their mother was living, but they were frequently,
if not altogether, at their aunt's. One day the two children were in the
back sitting-room along with their aunt, and one or two besides (I believe
their cousins). It is the room I very shortly afterwards lived in. The
children simultaneously cried out, ' Oh ! there's papa ! gone upstairs.'
They were laughed at, and chidden, but persisted, and the search had to
be made. Nothing was discovered. It was afterwards found by the testi-
mony of the papa himself, that exactly at that time when the children saw
him he had fallen into the Douro, and was in that stage of singular
experience before death by drowning when ' all the life seems mapped out
before the spirit,' and the soul is just on the point of parting from the
body. I do not recollect whether he said that he had specially thought of
his children in that supreme moment. Insensibility followed ; but he was
rescued, not too late for restoration. «< EDWARD BUTLER "

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Butler says : —

" With regard to your inquiry, I fear I should have some difficulty
now in getting any corroboration of my communication respecting my old
landlady, though my own remembrance of her communication is too vivid
to admit of the possibility of mistake. It was told me in the room, my
own room, where it occurred, with finger pointing to the passage and
staircase. Her name was Mrs. Booth ; the house, No. 7, Grove Terrace,
Leeds : the absentee in Spain, her own brother, William Wild ; of the
children, his daughters, every one I believe is dead. The daughters left
Leeds many years ago, and I believe I am right that they are neither of
them living."

(665) From Mr. Beresford Christmas, Carrara, Italy.

" November 30th, 1885.

" My father, George Beresford Christmas, was a cavalry officer in the
Danish service ; his elder and only brother, John Christmas, an admiral

618 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

in the same service. The latter's only son, Walter Christmas, was, and
is still for aught I know to the contrary, one of the gentlemen of the
bed-chamber to the King of Denmark. The circumstance I am about to
relate took place before my father's marriage, when he was yet a young
man and living with my grandfather in Copenhagen — it must have been
somewhere about 1825. Admiral C. had sailed for St. Thomas, and my
father accompanied him, leaving my grandfather in his usual health in
Denmark. The two brothers occupied the same cabin, across which, for
the sake of coolness on entering the tropics, a couple of cots had been
slung parallel to each other. They were within a few days' sail of the
island ; the sea calm, the sky clear, and, on the night in question, a bright
moonlight pouring in through the widely-opened cabin windows, lighting
up all within with almost the distinctness of daylight. Both brothers must
have been awaked suddenly and simultaneously — by what, they never
knew — by some irresistible and unknown power — waked to see standing
between their cots the figure of their father. Both gazed in mute amaze-
ment : there it stood, motionless for a moment, which seemed a century ;
then it raised one hand and pointed to its own eyes. They were closed.
My father started up in bed, and as he did so the form vanished. So
much was my uncle impressed with the fact that he at once entered it,
with date and moment of appearance, in the log-book ; while naturally the
circumstance became the all-absorbing topic of conversation and specula-
tion to all on board.

" When later letters reached them in- the West Indies, the hour and
minute, allowing of course for difference of time, were found to coincide
exactly with those in which my grandfather had died.

" In due time the circumstance was known to all Copenhagen.
Neither my uncle nor father ever liked to speak about it. I have had the
fact from the lips of both. Both firmly believed in the reality of the
vision, and neither of them was the man to give heed or credence to an
idle delusion. I remember both, in answer to a question of mine, declaring
to having felt no fear, or even awe : sudden wonder and an unaccountable
chill, as of an icy atmosphere,1 was the predominating impression. It was
only when the figure pointed to its own closed eyes, that a dumb dread of
impending bereavement awoke. My father, as also my uncle, used to
affirm that neither on the evening in question nor upon any of the
previous days had their father been particularly the subject of either their
conversation or thoughts. There was no preparation, so to say, on their
part for the apparition ; at the same instant both were suddenly awoke
from sleep by some mysterious and irresistible will, when both beheld the
identical form standing within arm's length of them.

" I have no doubt, if you have among your correspondents or members
anyone in Copenhagen willing to take the trouble, you might be able to
get at the entry made in the log-book.2 My uncle was on active service
till his death almost, which took place only a few years ago, and there
could be no difficulty in tracing back the vessels he commanded.

" BERESFORD CHRISTMAS."

1 See p. 37, note.

2 Unfortunately we have no Danish members. I have mentioned (in Vol. i., p. 161)
the great tendency of log-books to creep unauthorised into second-hand narratives of this
sort ; but the essential trustworthiness of the account does not, of course, depend on that
detail.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 619

The next case, if telepathically originated, is an interesting in-
stance of the appearance of a phantasm to certain percipients on local,
not personal, grounds (p. 268).

(666) From Miss Edith Farquharson, sent to us by her relative, Mrs.
Murray Aynsley, of Great Brampton, near Hereford.

"June, 1885.

"In the year 1868, No. 9, Drummond Place, Edinburgh, was in the
occupation of Mr. Farquharson, formerly a Judge of the High Court in
Jamaica. On the night of Good Friday in that year, two of his
daughters, Miss Edith Farquharson, her sister Marianne [now Mrs. Henry
Murray], and a little cousin, Agnes Spalding, aged 6 years, were sleeping
in a room at the top of the house. About 11.45 p.m., the two sisters were
awakened by hearing loud screams from the child, who was sleeping on a
mattress placed on the floor beside their bed. The mattress was against
the door leading into a dressing-room ; this door was locked and sealed
with white tapes and black wax ; it had been thus closed by a member of
the family to whom the house belonged before Mr. Farquharson entered
upon his tenancy. The death of the head of the family, and the delicacy
of health of one of the daughters, had caused them to wish to leave Edin-
burgh, and spend the winter in Torquay.

" On hearing the child's screams of terror, Miss M. F. touched her
sister and said, ' Do you hear the child screaming ? ' Miss E. F. replied
that she did, and turned her head round to listen better. When the
child was asked what she was screaming about, she said, 'I am wide awake,
and I have seen a figure which was leaning over me,' and when further
questioned where the figure went to, said, ' Round the side of your bed.'

" Miss E. F., when she turned round, saw a figure slide from near the
child's bed and pass along the foot of the bed whereon she and her sister
were. (At the first moment she thought it was a thief.) The latter, on
hearing her say in French ' H y a quelqu'un,' was so terrified that she hid
her head under the bedclothes.

" Miss E. F. describes the figure as being dressed in a rough brown
shawl held tightly round the bust, a wide brimmed hat, and a veil. When
the child was questioned afterwards she gave the same account of the
costume.

" Miss E. F. says that after passing along the foot of the bed with a
noiseless gliding motion, the figure disappeared into the darkness.

" Except the door which was locked and sealed, the only door of exit
to the room was one which was quite close to the bed ; at right angles
with the door and with the head of the bed was a large hanging cupboard.

" Both the ladies got up instantly. They found the door of their room
closed, as they had left it. Their brother's room was next to theirs ; they
knocked at his door to rouse him, at the same time keeping a sharp look-
out on the door of their own room to see that no one escaped. The whole
party then made a thorough search in the room and cupboard, found
nothing disturbed, and once more retired to rest. The next morning the
page-boy said that he had been unable to sleep all night on account of the
sounds he heard of someone scratching at his window. He declared that
he had shied all his boots and everything he could lay hold of in the
direction whence the noise came, but without effect. He could stand it

620 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

no longer, and went to the room where some of the women-servants slept,
begging to be let in. They had heard nothing, however, though they, like
himself, slept in the basement of the house.

" The whole family were hardly assembled on the Saturday morning,
when the son-in-law of the late owner of the house arrived, and asked to
see Mr. Farquharson. He wished particularly to know exactly what day
this gentleman and his family intended leaving the house, (their term
would expire the following week,) for he had just received a telegram in-
forming him that his sister-in-law had died that night, and they were
anxious to bring her body there immediately for burial."

(With respect to this last paragraph, the narrator's father writes : —
" The above is a correct statement of the occurrence.

"C. M. FARQUHARSON.")
Miss Farquharson continues : —

" The possible solution of what we presume to have been an apparition
of this lady is, that the bedroom occupied by the Misses Farquharson being
the one she habitually used, in her dying moments she desired to visit it
once more, or else that there was something in the dressing-room which
she particularly wished for. " EDITH A. FARQUHARSON."

The following independent account is from Mrs. Murray : —

" Cobo, Guernsey.

"June 24th, 1885.

"Our home was in Perthshire ; but in the winter of 1868 my father
took a house for four months in Drummond Place, No. 8, [? 9] in Edin-
burgh, in order to give us a change. The house belonged to General
Stewart, who had a delicate daughter, and he let it, to take the daughter
to Torquay for the winter. We did not know the Stewarts, so our
imagination could not have assisted in any way to account for the
curious apparition that was seen. I myself did not see it,1 but I was in
the room with my sister and little cousin, who both did. My belief is that
Providence prevented my seeing it, as I am of a very nervous tempera-
ment, and it might have had a very bad effect on me if I had. Well, the
apparition took place on Good Friday night, at about 12 o'clock. This
little cousin, who was only about 6 years old, had come into town from the
country, and as our house was very full she had a shake-down beside our
bed on my side. I was the first to be awakened by hearing her calling out
in a frightened way. So I said, ' What is the matter, Addie 1 ' ' Oh,' she
said, ' Cousin Marianne, I am so frightened. A figure has been leaning
over me, and whenever I put out my hands to push it off it leant back on
your bed ! ' At this I was alarmed and awoke my sister, who lifted her
head from her pillow and looked up, when she saw a figure gliding across
the foot of our bed wrapped in a shawl, with a hat and veil on. She
whispered to me in French ' II y a quelqu'un,' thinking it was a thief,
whereat we both jumped out of bed together and went to the next room
to get our brother, Captain Farquharson. His bedroom door had a shaky
lock which made a noise, so he had barricaded it with a portmanteau.
While he was coming to our help, we kept our eyes fixed on our door in
case anyone should have escaped, but we saw nothing, and after our all

1 Compare case 684, and see p. 105, second note.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 621

searching every corner of. the bedroom we came to the conclusion that no
one had been there, for everything was intact. We then questioned little
Addie as to what she had seen and what the figure was like. She described
it as that of a lady with a shawl on and a hat, and a veil over her face,
and said that as I spoke she had gone across the foot of the bed in the
same direction that my sister had seen her go. This child, I must tell you,
had been most carefully brought up by her mother, and was not allowed to
read even fairy tales for fear of having foolish ideas in her head, which
makes the thing more remarkable, for she had certainly never heard of a
ghost. I don't know even now whether she knows anything about it, for
we had to pretend that it must have been my eldest sister who had come
in to play us a trick, for fear of frightening her.

" Then the next morning we were relating our adventures, when a ring
came to the door, and the servant said a gentleman wanted to speak to
my father. This gentleman was a Mr. Findlay, who had married a Miss
Stewart. He came to ask when we were to leave, for he knew it was about
the time, as he had received a telegram that morning to say that Miss
Stewart had died in Torquay during the night, and they wanted to bring
her body to Edinburgh. We heard afterwards from friends of the
Stewarts that the bedroom we had had been hers. I forgot to mention
that the child's bed lay across the door of a small room which had been
locked up by the Stewarts, and they had put tapes across and sealed them
with black wax.

" We have none of us ever had any hallucinations either before or after
this strange affair. « MARIANNE MURRAY."

We find from the Scotsman and the Edinburgh Courant that Miss
Stewart died on April 11, 1868, the day following Good Friday. If the
death took place in the course of a few hours after midnight, " during the
night " would of course be the natural expression.

Mrs. Brietzcke, of 72, Sterndale Road, W., after reading this account
in the Journal of the S.P.R., wrote to us as follows, on Sept. 29, 1885 : —

" I was very intimate with two Misses Myers ; and within a day or
two of their cousins', the Misses Farquharson, having the experience
related, they (the Misses Myers) told me the affair, just as related in the
Journal ; and they also, I understood, had seen Boyd (2, York Place,
Edinburgh), the house-agent, and heard that the description of the lady
in the large hat and veil was exactly like the lady to whom the house
belonged. The Misses Myers were much impressed. The elder is dead ;
the other married a Mr. Dunlop, and went to India ; I have lost sight of

her: " H. K. BRIETZCKE."

Mrs. Murray confirms the fact that her cousins, the Misses Myers,
were informed of the vision very soon after its occurrence, and adds : —
" I do not think any of us mentioned it to Mr. Boyd ; he may have heard
it from someone else, for it caused quite a sensation in Edinburgh. I have
no reason to believe that the dress of the figure was in any way character,
istic of Miss Stewart." 1

1 A narrative somewhat resembling this was given in Tinsley's Magazine for December,
1873, in connection with a family named Fitzgerald, alleged to have resided at Ballyreina,
in Ireland. We have not been able to trace the writer of this paper, or to discover any
place called Ballyreina. There is a village in Ireland called Ballyraine ; but we cannot
find that any family of the name of Fitzgerald has been connected with it.

622 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

[The resemblance of the figure seen to the lady who died is entirely
problematic. It might almost have been foretold as certain that the
resemblance would form a prominent item in any third-hand version of
the occurrence.]

(667) From the Methodist Magazine for March, 1819, p. 208, — a letter
to the Editor. « Rochester, February 4th, 1818.

" SIR, — At the Sheffield Conference of 1817, when examining the
young men in the public congregation, I was greatly surprised by the
extraordinary declaration of one of the preachers. The effect his narrative
produced upon the audience induced me to request him to commit to paper
what he had so distinctly detailed. As it contains a well-authenticated
account of what infidelity has affected to deny, and many well-informed
Christians receive with suspicion and doubt, your insertion of his letter to
me will at least afford some further evidence on a question which is of
such high interest and importance to the world. « I. GAULTER."

" Sheffield.

" 8th August, 1817.

" MR. PRESIDENT, — HON. SIR, — According to your desire I take up my
pen, to give you the particulars of a solemn fact, which was the first grand
means of leading my mind seriously to think of those solemn realities —
death, judgment, and eternity.

" A sister being married to a gentleman in the army, we received
intelligence that the regiment to which he belonged had orders for one of
the Spanish Isles (Minorca). One night (16 years back) about 10 o'clock,
as his wife, his child, an elder sister, and myself (a boy of nine years) were
sitting in a back room, the shutters were closed, bolted, and barred, the
yard-door locked, when suddenly a light shone through the window, the
shutters, the bars, illumined the room we sat in.1 We looked — started —
and beheld the spirit 2 of a murdered brother ; his eye was fixed on his wife
and child alternately ; he waved his hand, smiled, continued about half a
minute, then vanished from our sight. The moment before the spirit
disappeared, my sister cried, ' He's dead ; he's dead ' / and fainted away.
Her little boy ran to his father's spirit, and wept because it would not
stay. A short time after this, we received a letter from the colonel of
the regiment sealed with black (the dark emblem of mortality), bearing
the doleful but expected news, that on such a night (the same on which
we saw his spirit) my brother-in-law was found weltering in his blood (in
returning from the mess-room) ; the spark of life was not quite out. The
last wish he was heard to breathe was to see his wife and child ; it was
granted him in a certain sense, for the very hour he died in the Island of
Minorca, that same hour (according to the very little difference of clocks)
his spirit appeared to his wife, his child, an elder sister, and myself, in
Doncaster. ... "I am, Sir, yours obediently,

" THOS. SAVAGE."

1 This case should be added to the list given in Vol. i., p. 551, second note, of
examples where the phantasm has included a marked appearance of luminosity.

2 See p. 48, note.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 623

" P.S. — My sister, from the night she saw the spirit of her husband,
mourned him as dead, nor could my father prevent it by any argument.
He endeavoured to persuade us we were all deceived, yet he acknowledged
the testimony which the child gave staggered him ; but when the letter
arrived from the colonel of the regiment, with the awful tidings, he was
struck dumb. My two sisters are yet living and can testify to the truth
of this account, and at least one hundred persons beside our own family
can prove our mentioning the hour the spirit appeared, several weeks before
we received the melancholy letter, and that the letter mentioned the hour
and night he died as the same in which we beheld his spirit. " T. S."

Mr. Savage wrote a precisely concordant account l (of which we have
a copy) for the Rev. R. Filter, whose daughter writes as follows on the
subject to our friend, the Rev. J. A. Macdonald : —

" Doncaster.

"December 17th, 1885.

" DEAR MR. MACDONALD, — My father, the Rev. R. Filter, heard Mr.
Savage relate a curious fact at the Conference when he was received into
' full connexion.' Mr. Savage said that as a youth he had been sceptically
inclined, 2 but that the circumstance related had led to his conversion.
My father was so much interested that he requested Mr. Savage to write
down the narrative for him. He did so. The paper which you have
accurately copied was the result ; it was carefully preserved, and fell into
my hands at my father's death.

" The Rev. H. Hastling, who lived in Doncaster 50 years ago, remem-
bers the tale very well. His recollection agrees exactly with the narrative
you have copied. The sister's husband was supposed to have been mur-
dered in mistake for somebody else, or else by someone who had a grudge
against him. Mr. Hastling says the scene was a house in St. George's
Gate, pulled down a few years ago.

" Yours very truly, "J. M. FILTER."

§ 4. In the following group of cases, it is more doubtful whether
the experience recorded should be ascribed to the agency of the
person whom the phantasm represented. If not, they are simply
examples of transferred hallucinations of subjective origin, and as
such their position in this book has been sufficiently explained (pp.
183, 189-92). The first three examples are (except in the fact of
being collective) parallel to the "arrival cases" of Chap. XIV., § 7.

(668) From The Journal of Mental Science, for April, 1880, p. 151.
The editor writes, on Feb. 12, 1880 :—

" We have received the following letter from a physician, narrating
two psychological experiences, in one of which another element enters,

1 This account adds the detail that the name of the colonel of the regiment was Heb-
born. We cannot verify this detail without a more extensive search than the War Office
authorities will permit. The English withdrew from Minorca in 1802, having been in
occupation there for a few years. This agrees with Mr. Savage's statement.

2 As Mr. Savage was only 9 at the time of the occurrence, he probably did not use
exactly this phrase.

624 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

namely, an external event coincident with the subjective impression.
Had our correspondent been expected by his family at the time, the
explanation of ' expectant attention ' in an abnormal condition of the
nervous system might have sufficed, if it be admitted that two persons
can, through this cause, have optical illusions at the same moment.
Whether in such cases mere coincidence is a sufficient solution, or whether
the two circumstances stand in any causal relation, must be decided by
such an accumulation of evidence as would render the first hypothesis

untenable." ,£Ti, , , 0, , oor.

"February 12th, 1880.

" MY DEAR DR. TUKE, — Although the following circumstance is not
exactly similar in kind to that related by Dr. Jessopp, you may like to
make use of it. At any rate, it is at your service, and you may rely
upon its being quite accurate. One day, some years ago, two of my
female relations were looking out of a window in Greenwich just opposite
the hospital, and both saw, or thought they saw, me pass and look in.
One of them ran immediately to the door, but to her astonishment could
see no one either up or down the street. At this time I was not
expected, being, as all my family supposed, in Paris. But within a
quarter of an hour I arrived at Greenwich. When I did enter, I was
called to account for the practical joke I was supposed to have played
upon my relations, by peeping in at the window and then concealing
myself, and it was with some difficulty I convinced them that I had come
straight to the house.

" Some years after this, my wife and daughter (not the relations
referred to previously) were sitting in the dining-room, when they both
saw an old lady enter at the gate, and walk up the steps leading to the
front door of the house. My wife said to her daughter, ' What can bring
old Mrs. C. out in such a flood of rain? Run and open the door, that
she may not have to wait for the servant to answer the bell.' On opening
the door, there was no one there, nor in the garden. Some other curious
things of the same character have occurred ; but as the illusion affected
only a single person, I refrain from mentioning them, as they might arise
from the physical condition of the parties concerned, which could hardly,
I think, be the case with the others. — Very sincerely yours,

"M. D."

In answer to inquiries, Dr. Hack Tuke writes to us : —

" Lyndon Lodge, Han well, W.

"January 29th, 1885.

" ' M. D.' died some while ago. His name was Dr. Boase, long re-
spected as a physician at Falmouth. He retired to Plymouth, where he
took an active part in the Irvingite Church to which he belonged.

" He was altogether reliable, and I have no reason to doubt the cor-
rectness of the facts narrated. « j) jj TUKE."

[These incidents, if correctly recorded, do not look like mistakes of
identity. If (as may be guessed from " M.D.'s " final sentence) either
of the percipients in the second case had on other occasions experienced
purely subjective hallucinations, the fact would be of interest as favouring
the view that the vision of Mrs. C. originated subjectively in one of the
two minds.]

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 625

(669) From Mrs. Sturge, 2, Midland Road, Gloucester.

" Nov. 26, 1884.

" When residing in Montserrat, West Indies, in or about the year
1858, I was on a visit to some friends in the principal town of Antigua.
One evening Mr. George Habershon, a gentleman who boarded with the
family, but lodged in another part of the town, remained rather late ;
Mrs. Burns, the lady of the house, retired, leaving her daughters, to
one of whom Mr. Habershon was engaged, and a young lady named
Minnie Anderson, and myself downstairs. The evening was a beautiful
moonlight one. As soon as Mr. Habershon left, a servant passed through
the room in which we were sitting and fastened the outer door, leading
from the verandah into the street, passing into the house after he had
done so. Soon after Minnie uttered an exclamation. I looked up and saw
Mr. H., or what appeared to be him, entering the room from the
verandah, and I said, ' Mr. Habershon ! ' Minnie said, ' Yes.' None of the
others in the room saw him. The apparition disappeared almost immedi-
ately. We were somewhat startled at his unexpected reappearance, and
searched about and looked down the road (it was bright moonlight, as
mentioned before), but could see no one, nor could we understand how he
could have got in, as the outer door was locked.

" When our hostess heard of the matter in the morning she was much
annoyed, and on Mr. Habershon's arrival to breakfast, she spoke to him
about having come back, frightening the girls. He declared he had not
done so, but said that on his way home he had thought of returning to
ask for a piece of meat for the dogs, a thing which he had done more than
once before, and that he stood in the road considering whether or no he
should do so, deciding in the negative because he thought we should laugh
at him, as he often did come back. I suppose he appeared to Minnie and
myself at the time he was considering whether or no he should return.

" I regret to say most of those who were present in that room, as
well as Mr. Habershon, are now no more, but I believe I have correctly
narrated the facts. The only survivor is now the wife of Justice Semper,
a judge in the Supreme Court of the Leeward Isles. I may add that
Mr. Habershon was a much esteemed young Englishman, whose veracity
could be entirely depended upon. " ANNIE STURGE."

Mrs. Semper sends us the following independent account, from which
it appears that she was not herself present at the time.

" St. Kitts.

"20th April, 1886.

" The incident to which you refer took place in the house of my father,
Mr. Burns. I was not present, but the strange tale was told to me, and
I am very pleased to tell you all I know about it, in accordance with
your request. The facts, as well as I can call them to mind, are these.
Mr. George Habershon spent the evening with my family. On his leaving,
all the members of it retired to rest with the exception of my sister (since-
dead) and her friend Mrs. Sturge ; the two girls remained in the drawing-
room, which was still brightly lighted. To their surprise they became
aware that Mr. Habershon had come back, and was standing at one of
the entrance doors, gazing at them. They pretended not to see him ; but
on his keeping his statue-like position, they got so curious to know why

VOL. II. 2 S

626 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

he had returned that one of them asked what he wanted. They received no
reply, and on advancing to where he stood, he disappeared. Imagining
he was playing them a trick, they searched about the verandah ; they
then watched the street up which he had to go to get to his lodgings — and
it being a bright, moonlight night, every object would be seen distinctly.
He, however, was not there.

" Next day, on their asking Mr. Habershon how he managed to elude
them, he professed perfect ignorance of what they were talking about.
Later on, my mother, who thought he had mystified the girls enough,
privately asked him to set the matter at rest by explaining it. Mr.
Habershon assured her that he had not come back. He said he had had
a strong and almost irresistible wish to do so, that he had turned and
walked a few steps, and then, thinking by that time the door would be
shut, he retraced his steps and went home. Mr Habershon's denial could
not be doubted by any one who knew him.

" I may as well mention that Mr. Habershon was engaged to be
married to my sister, and the reason he wished to return to the house was
that he had not quite understood something she wished done.

" MINNIE SEMPER [nee BURNS]."

[It will be seen that Mrs. Semper represents her sister, and not
Minnie Anderson, as the second percipient. After a conversation with
Mrs. Sturge, I feel no doubt that her version is the correct one. The
discrepancies between the two accounts can scarcely be held to affect the
central fact described.]

(670) From Dr. Wyld, 41, Courtfield Road, S.W.

"December, 1882.

"Miss L. and her mother were for 15 years my most intimate
friends ; they were ladies of the highest intelligence, and perfectly
truthful, and their story was confirmed by one of the servants ; the other
servant I could not trace.

" Miss L., some years before I made her acquaintance, occupied
much of her time in visiting the poor. One day, as she walked home-
wards, she felt cold and tired, and longed to be at home, warming herself
at the kitchen fire. At or about the minute corresponding to this wish,
the two servants being in the kitchen, the door-handle was seen to turn,
the door opened,1 and in walked Miss L., and going up to the fire she
held out her hands and warmed herself, and the servants saw she had a
pair of green kid gloves on her hands. She suddenly disappeared before
their eyes, and the two servants in great alarm went upstairs and told
the mother what they had seen, including the green kid gloves. The
mother feared something was wrong, but she attempted to quiet the
servants by reminding them that Miss L. always wore black and never
green gloves, and that therefore the ' ghost ' could not have been that
of her daughter.

" In about half-an-hour the veritable Miss L. entered the house, and
going into the kitchen warmed herself by the fire ; and she had on a pair
of green kid gloves which she had bought on her way home, not being able
to get a suitable black pair. «Q.. WYLD, M.D."

The Rev. W. Stainton Moses writes : —

1 See p. 612, note.

ix. J COLLECTIVE CASES. 627

"21, Birchington Road, N.W., January 31st, 1883.

" I have heard the story of Miss L. from her mother. It is, as
far as my memory serves, recounted here with perfect accuracy. Both the
ladies mentioned were intimately known to me, and entirely to be trusted.

" W. STAINTON MOSES."

[This case, it will be seen, does not depend on the testimony of the
servants, but on that of Mrs. L., whose character for truthfulness is vouched
for by two gentlemen who knew her intimately. The point as to the longing
to be " warming herself at the kitchen fire " is, however, one very likely to
have been imagined or exaggerated ; even supposing that it was genuinely
remembered, the " minute corresponding " to it is not likely to have been
afterwards ascertainable, though very likely indeed. to be inferred as that
of the apparition ; and it is impossible to be sure that the green gloves
were mentioned before the reality of their existence was known ; so that
Miss L.'s agency cannot be confidently assumed.]

The next two cases resemble Nos. 328 and 329, the state of the
person whose phantasm appeared presenting nothing which could
be supposed to be a distinctive condition of telepathic agency.

(671) From Dr. Buchanan (late H.E.I. C.S. Bengal Establishment), 12,
Rutland Square, Edinburgh. All the percipients are dead, except one,
who is inaccessible. Among them were Dr. Buchanan's late wife, and
her parents.

"The following circumstance took place at a villa about one and a-half
miles from Glasgow, and was told me by my wife. Of its truth I am as
certain as if I had been a witness. The house had a lawn in front, of
about three or four acres in extent, with a lodge at the gate very distinctly
seen from the house, which was about 80 yards distant. Two of the
family were going to visit a friend seven miles distant, and on the previous
day it had been arranged to take a lady, Miss W., with them, who was to
be in waiting at a place about a mile distant. Three of the family and a
lady visitor were standing at one of the dining-room windows waiting for
the carriage, when they, including my wife, saw Miss W. open the gate at
the lodge. The wind had disarranged the front of a pelisse which she
wore, which they distinctly saw her adjust. She wore a light grey-
coloured beaver hat, and had a handkerchief at her mouth ; it was
supposed that she was suffering from toothache, to which she was subject.
She entered the lodge, to the surprise of her friends, and as she did not
leave it, a servant was sent to ask her to join the family ; but she was
informed that Miss W. had not been there, and it was afterwards
ascertained that no one, except the woman's husband, had been in the
lodge that morning.

"The carriage arrived at the house about 10 a.m., and Miss W. was
found at the place agreed upon in the dress in which she appeared at the
lodge, and suffering from toothache. As she was a nervous person, nothing
was said to her of her appearance at the gate. She died nine years
afterwards. "WM. M. BUCHANAN, M.D."

Dr. Buchanan wrote, on 30th Oct., 1883, to say that he had just been
staying with relatives of his late wife, who had often heard the story
from her, and confirmed it in every detail, except that it was a white
VOL. ii. 2 s 2

628 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

beaver hat. He adds that " those who witnessed the fact are quite matter-
of-fact people, not in the slightest degree excitable, and most certainly
not nervous."

[The fact of the figure's seeming to enter the lodge, as to which Dr.
Buchanan is quite positive, favours the hypothesis of hallucination, as
against that of mistaken identity.]

(672) From Mrs. Be van, Plumpton House, Bury St. Edmunds.

" 1884.

"In the month of July, 1855, I was spending a week with my
brother, the Rector of Chedburgh, and his sweet young wife, when one
evening, after the children had gone to bed, and we were all three sitting
together, my brother said, ' Cecilia and I have often wanted to ask you
whether you were thinking of us in any special way on the 15th of last
November ] '

" After a few minutes' consideration, I could only say that I remem-
bered nothing of the sort, as there was no special cause for it at that time,
and begged to know why they asked.

" My brother then said that on the morning of that day, which of
course they specially noted, he awoke while the night-light was still
burning, between 6 and 7 o'clock, and opening his eyes, he distinctly saw
me standing at the foot of the bed, on his wife's side of it. After
watching me for a short time with some wonder, but with no sensation of
fear, he reached out his hand and touched his wife, saying, ' Cecilia, are
you awake ? ' ' Yes, I have been awake some minutes.' ' Do you see
anything ? ' ' Yes, I see Sarah standing at the foot of the bed.' ' How
very strange ! ' and while they spoke to each other, the furniture of the
room was seen through my figure, which soon entirely disappeared.1

" We were at the time living only 14 miles off, and I was in a delicate
state of health. They came down to breakfast quite expecting that the
post would bring some bad news of me, and all day looked for a
messenger from Sudbury, and made an early reason for driving over, to
find all as usual. Thinking that such a strange circumstance might make
me nervous, they kept it to themselves until time had proved that, what-
ever it was, no harm had come to me. They asked each other whether it
could possibly have been our mother who was then living near Norwich,
and who died there in February, 1855, but they were quite agreed that it
was no o.ne but me. I certainly knew nothing about it, either at the
time or afterwards ; nor did it make me feel the least nervous.

" My dear brother and his wife also are passed to the other world ;
she in 1862, he in 1864. " SARAH BEVAN."

[I have pointed out, on p. 83, that a person whose phantasm has ap-
peared to others, and who has been informed of the fact, is in rather a
different position from an ordinary second-hand witness.]

In the next two cases the originating agency of an absent living
person seems out of the question ; and for the first of them, at
any rate, there would, in my view, be no difficulty in supposing a
purely subjective origin in one mind, (perhaps that of the dying
woman,) and a transference thence to the other.
1 See p. 38, note, and p. 97, first note.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 629

(673) From Miss J. E. Walker, 48, Pembroke Road, Clifton, Bristol.
She heard the account from a cousin, of whom she writes, on Feb. 6, 1883: —

" Cousin Emmeline was old Squire Bingley's youngest daughter ; she
was sincere and fearlessly true, but she had no poetic and scarcely any
imaginative faculty. I should have cited her as a good specimen any-
where of the matter-of-fact and common-place woman, which perhaps
gives a somewhat additional weight to her narrative which she confided
to me many years ago. She died about 6 years since." Later Miss
Walker adds : — " The event narrated took place when she was
about 20, and must have happened in (I think) 1844 or 1845. She
told me her story very simply and vivd voce. She also told it separately
to my elder sister in precisely the same terms. It was / who threw it,
for brevity's sake, into the narrative form " [and into the first person].

" My father and mother had many children ; most of us died in
infancy ; Susanna survived, and Charlotte and myself. Father's was an
entailed estate, and the deaths of two sons, William, who died in boyhood,
and John, who died in infancy, had been the great disappointment of his
life. Susanna remembered both the boys, but William was born and died
long before my time, and John died at about two years old, when I was the
baby. Of William there was no likeness, but you know John's picture
well, a well-painted full-length oil picture representing a toddling babe in
white frock and blue shoes, one of my father's prize greyhounds crouching
beside him, and an orange rolling at his feet.

" I was grown up, about 20, Susanna was 40, and Charlotte about 30
years old. Father was declining, and we lived together, contented and
united, in a pleasant house on the borders of Harrogate Common. On
the day about which I am writing, Charlotte was unwell ; she had com-
plained of a chill, and the doctor recommended her to keep in bed. She
was sleeping quietly that afternoon, and Susanna sat on one side of her
bed and I sat on the other ; the afternoon sun was waning, and it began to
grow dusky, but not dark. I do not know how long we had been sitting
there, but by chance I raised my head and I saw a golden light above
Charlotte's bed, and within the light were enfolded two cherubs' faces
gazing intently upon her. 1 was fascinated and did not stir, neither did
the vision fade for a little while. At last I put my hand across the bed
to Susanna, and I only said this word, ' Susanna, look up ! ' She did so,
and at once her countenance changed, 'Oh, Emmeline,' she said, 'they are
William and John.' Then both of us watched on till all faded away like
a washed-out picture ; and in a few hours Charlotte died of sudden inflam-
mation."

In conversation, Miss Walker told me that she is certain that her
cousin drew the other sister's attention to the vision without mentioning
what she herself saw ; also that she was singularly precise in statement
and incapable of exaggeration.

*

We find from the Register of Deaths that Miss Charlotte Bingley died
at Harrogate, on June 8, 1843.

The next account is one of the puzzling carriage-cases mentioned
on p. 195. Here there was a local tradition of a phantasm carriage,

630 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

due to sounds, frequently heard, which were probably not hallucina-
tions but illusions ; and this may possibly have acted as a favourable
condition to a visual hallucination of the sort described ; but it will
not in the least account for the correspondence and coincidence of
the two hallucinations, which yet can hardly have been accidental
I do not give the case an evidential number, because the written
account does not make it appear as impossible as to the witnesses
on the spot it certainly did appear, that the carriage should have
been a real one. The narrator is Mr. Paul Bird, Strand, Calcutta.

"July 25th, 1884.

" One evening, just at dusk, I was returning home from office in my
buggy, with lamps lighted. It was dusk, but under the shadow of the
trees which overhang the avenue it was pretty dark. I was driving
pretty fast, when I heard what appeared to be a runaway gharrie coming
from the house towards me. I immediately checked my horse and peered
ahead to see how to avoid the coming danger, but as the noise did not
appear to get any nearer, I cautiously proceeded, and when about 100
yards from the house, distinctly saw the reflection of my lamps on the
panels of a carriage in front of me, proceeding the same way, viz., to
Hastings House [in the suburb of Alipore]. I kept my eyes on the panels,
so as not to run into them. The gharrie turned to the left to go under
the portico, followed by me,1 but when I arrived there, there was no gharrie;
it had disappeared. I was very much puzzled at this, but should probably
have thought nothing more about it, had not my wife, who was watching
for my arrival from an upper window, asked me at once, ' What gharrie
was that just ahead of you ? ' This, you will admit, was curious, and I
offer no theory about it. « PAUL BIRD."

Mrs. Bird writes, on July 26, 1884 : —

" I cannot add anything further to my husband's description about the
gharrie at Hastings House, except that I also saw the outline of the
gharrie as it came up the avenue in front of my husband's buggy, with
his lamps shining on it so as to define the outline ; and I was at a window
upstairs watching for my husband's return, so that we saw the apparition
from totally different points of view, and without, of course, holding any
communication. I suddenly lost sight of the fictitious gharrie, and did not
trace it right up to the portico. It turned off, I thought, from the direct
road ; certainly, it disappeared. I may further state that I heard no
sound of a second vehicle, but only that made by my husband's horse and
buggy ; but I was aware of his checking his horse, as if he saw something
ahead, and this action of his may have been the cause of conjuring up in
my vision the supposed gharrie. We have always spoken very sceptically
of this circumstance, although feeling in our inner consciousness that there
was something not utterly to be disregarded in the occurrence.

"GERTRUDE BIRD."
1 See p. 616, first note.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES, 631

§ 5. The remaining cases are auditory. In the following group
the impression was of a recognised voice.

(674) From Mr. C. F. H. Froehnert, (Bandmaster of the Royal
Marines,) 3, Victoria Place, Stonehouse, Plymouth, who wrote as follows
to the Daily Telegraph, on October 15, 1881.

" SIR, — Returning from India in 1854, I resided for a few months at
Diisseldorf, and there made the acquaintance of two well-known families —
Haskal and Focke. Mr. Haskal, a gentleman well known as the author
of several works on Oriental botany, held a high appointment under
the Dutch Government in Batavia ; and his family, consisting of Mrs.
Haskal, several daughters, and Miss Focke as companion, had engaged
passage out in a large Dutch vessel, and sailed from Amsterdam. One
evening, soon afterwards, when Mrs. Focke, with the rest of her family,
were at tea, they all heard a loud cry of ' Mother ! ' outside the window.
They all recognised at once the voice of the eldest daughter, Anna, who
had sailed with the Haskals. They rushed to the window, but saw
nothing. Scarcely had they taken their seats again, when a most
agonising shriek was heard, and twice ' Mother, mother,' in the same
voice. A few days later a report came that a large Dutch vessel had
been wrecked. I had left for England, and was written to and asked to
make inquiries at Lloyd's if there was truth in this report. The answer
I received was that on that particular evening this vessel was lost with
every soul on board.— Yours truly, « c F H FROEHNERT."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Froehnert wrote to us, on June 11,
1883 :—

" The Fockes were old and well-known residents of Diisseldorf ; but
no doubt Mr. and Mrs. Focke are dead by this time ; but there was
another daughter — sister of the one lost — but I dare say she has been
married long since, and would go under another name. Diisseldorf being
near Holland, the news of a large Dutch vessel having been lost soon
reached that town, especially as it was reported that among the effects
washed on shore many things were recognised as having belonged to the
family, Haskal, such as some valuable pictures, &c., &c.

" Mrs. If Jen, a friend of mine and the Haskals, wrote to me,1 telling
me of the hearing of the voice on that particular evening, and of the
rumour of the stranding of the vessel, requesting me to ascertain at
Lloyd's if a vessel had been lost ; the answer was as I stated, the ship
had been lost that very night.

" Mrs. Haskal and her children had also resided at Diisseldorf until
they departed.

" At the time when this happened I was Bandmaster of the 2nd Life
Guards at London."

Mr. Froehnert adds, on April 1, 1885 : —

" In reply to your letter regarding the Focke case at Diisseldorf, I am*
sorry I cannot recollect the house they were living in at the time ; it is so
long ago. But I quite remember that it was in a quiet locality ; and the
voice came from the back of the house, which in most German houses is
called ' Der Hof,' and which is usually not frequented in the evening by

1 Unfortunately this letter has not been preserved.

632 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

the occupants of the houses ; the voice came distinctly through the
window, which was open."

In the next case, the two persons affected were widely separated,
and their impressions differed.

(675) From Mr. Thomas Young, Elsinore House, Robert Road, Hands-
worth, Birmingham. «3lst December, 1884.

" One evening — ten years ago about — I was sitting at tea with my wife
and children, when my wife suddenly said, ' What a noise there is
upstairs,' asking me if I heard it. I said ' No.' She, however, insisted
that there was, and insisted upon going upstairs to investigate. She could
hear the windows rattled as if by the wind. I accompanied her upstairs,
and as she went she suddenly felt a wind rush by her. I felt no rush of
wind, nor were the windows rattling. The night was calm. After
investigating the room from whence the wind was supposed to proceed,
and finding nothing out of the common, we returned to the parlour, my
wife much agitated, and I was also agitated. When next she heard from
home, it was a letter conveying the sad intelligence of her father's death by
drowning, which took place about the time she felt the physical influence.
But what is still more strange, her brother, who was captain of a small
vessel, and at sea on the same evening of his poor father's death, heard
his name called. He was in the cabin at the time. He immediately went
on deck, asking who called. ' No one,' was the reply. He went into his
cabin, and again he heard his name, and again he went on deck, thinking
a trick was being played. Once more all denied having called him. He
thereupon re-entered his cabin, only to hear his name called again, and on
demanding sternly who called, and receiving the same answer, ' No one,'
he said he felt very queer.1 <. THOMAS YOUNG."

[Mrs. Young's experience could not be presented as telepathic evidence
on its own account, the impression having been so vague. But she is
not a nervous or fanciful person, and is certain that she has never had any
similar experience — while the fact that her husband did not hear or feel
what she heard and felt decidedly supports the view that the experience
was hallucination ; and if so, it is a remarkable fact that it fell on the
night which was marked not only by her father's death, but by her
brother's far more distinct hallucination of the recognised voice.]

Captain Adams writes: —

" 62, Commercial Road, Newport, Monmouthshire.

"November 13th, 1885.

" In answer to your letter in reference to my father's death, I will
endeavour in a few lines to give you the information you want.

"As the ship was lying in the port of St. Malo, in France, on the
15th December, 1871, I was lying in my berth at 4 o'clock in the
afternoon. I heard a voice. I knew the voice at once to be my father's,
calling ' Jim, Jim, Jim.' It was not a dream, for I was awake and
getting up. I asked the men on board whether they heard anyone calling.

1 Here again we have an account of three separate calls — the favourite legendary
number (p. 229, note). In the first-hand version which follows, it will be seen that there
is no mention of any repetition of the call, though it is represented as having consisted of
three utterances of the name.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 633

They said, ' No.' I said to them, ' My father is dead.' When I arrived
at Jersey (Island), my wife said to me, ' There is bad news for you.' I
said, ' Yes, I know ; my father is dead.' This was about nine days after
my father was lost in Burnham (Essex). When I read the news of his
death, [I found that] it was at the same hour I heard his voice.

" JAMES ADAMS."

In answer to an inquiry as to whether this was his sole experience of
a hallucination, Captain Adams adds : —

" You wish to know whether it is the only time I have heard anything
of the kind. Yes, it is the only time."

Mrs. Adams writes for her husband, on January 19th, 1886 : —

" In reply to your letter of November 17th, in which you ask a few
more questions :

" First. — You ask my husband whether he made a note of it. He
did not ; but he always remembered the date, for he has a very good
memory.

" Secondly. — It is impossible to find any of the men who were with
him at the time. Some are dead. The others, I do not know where they are.

" S. E. ADAMS."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the father of Mrs. Young
and Captain Adams was drowned in the River Crouch on Dec. 15, 1871.

In the next case, the agency is doubtful, as, though a near relative
of one of the percipients died at the time, the voice heard was taken
to be that of his brother. It is not unlikely that the two men's
voices resembled one another's : compare the cases of mis-recogni-
tion, Nos. 170 and 171. The account is first-hand ; but we do not
know how long a period had elapsed after the occurrence, before it
was recorded in writing.

(676) From the Gentleman's Magazine tor 1752, Vol. XXII., pp. 173-4.
The editor states the writer (who signs himself "A. B.") to be " a man of
great veracity," and the communication to be " a piece of his own private
history."

"On the 23rd August, 1736, at noon, standing at the shop door with
my mistress and maid-servant and Mr. Bloxham, then rider to Mr. Oakes
and Co. (who now lives and follows the haberdashery trade in Cateaton
Street), we were choosing figured ribbons and other millinery goods, when
I heard my father's voice call ' Charles,' very audibly. As accustomed, I
answered, ' Coming, sir.' Being intent on viewing the patterns, I stayed
about four minutes, when I heard a voice a second time call ' Charles.'
The maid heard it then as well as myself, and answered, ' He is coming,
Mr. W — m — n.' But the pattern book not being gone through with, I
was impatient to see the end, and being also unwilling to detain the gentle-
man, I still tarried. Then I saw the door open,1 heard my father call a
third time, in a strong, emphatic, angry tone, and shutting the door I heard

1 Compare cases 659 and 670. I have mentioned that this form of hallucination is one
that occurs also in purely subjective cases.

634 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

its sound. Both my mistress and the maid heard this last call, on which
she pushed me out of the shop with, ' Sirrah, get you gone, your father is
quite angry at your stay.' I ran over, lifted up the latch, but found the
gate locked. Then going in at the back gate saw my mother-in-law in the
yard. ... I immediately went in, when I found no father nor any
appearance of dinner. Returning, I inquired of her for my father ; she

said he was not come home, nor would dine at home that day

I then went back to the company, whose consternation was as great as my

own Whether all this was the force of imagination I cannot

say, I believe it may. I will not argue to the contrary, though two senses
of two persons besides myself could not, probably, be so liable to deception.
My mind and disposition from that hour received a new turn. I became
another creature ....

"It is very remarkable that I had an only uncle (who was gunner
of the ' Biddeford,' then stationed at Leith), that died there that same
day and about the same hour."

We learn from the Admiralty that H.M.S. " Biddeford " was at Leith
Road on August 23, 1736.

The following case is an exact parallel to No. 336, and should be
read in connection with the remarks on pp. 190-2.

(677) From Mr. Emmerson, Cullercoats, near Newcastle-on-Tyne.

"January 9th, 1885.

" In the summer of 1849, I was sitting in my studio painting, about
noon, three days after my mother was buried. (In this locality people
were dying by hundreds of cholera — of which she died.) I distinctly
heard her call my name, ' Harry,' in a very loud voice, which made me
start to my feet. My father, who was in another room, rushed into my
studio, terrified, and asked me if I had heard my mother calling me. My
mother, who was deaf, had a very shrill voice, that there was no
mistaking it.

" This is the only experience of the kind that I have ever met with,
but which made a lasting impression on my mind.

" H. H. EMMERSON."

Mr. Emmerson's father is dead. Mrs. Emmerson writes to us on
January 21st, 1886 :—

" I wish to write a few lines to inform you that I frequently heard my
husband and his father talking about both of them hearing the mother
calling him by name. They were both most positive about it ; and it left
quite an impression upon their minds. I can vouch for the truth of this
statement. « MARY EMMERSON."

In conversation, I learnt from Mr. Emmerson that he and his father
were the only persons in the house at the time that the voice was heard ;
he had no sisters living at home, and the household had been disorganised
owing to the cholera. Mr. Emmerson is very far from inclined to believe
in marvels, and the above has simply remained in his mind as a unique
and inexplicable fact, which at the time was evidently of the most startling
kind. The conditions were of course favourable to subjective hallucina-
tion ; but, equally of course, this will not explain the double experience.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 635

§ 6. In the next and final group, no articulate sounds were heard ;
and in most of the cases the impression was of a mere noise.

The following two cases are too remote for details to be relied
on ; and the nature of the sounds may very likely have become
more precise in recollection after the coincident facts were known.
Still it may be surmised that the experiences described were, at any
rate, collective hallucinations.

(678) From Mr. M. P. Stephenson, the narrator of case 613.

" 8, Southfield Road, Gotham, Bristol.

"January 31st, 1884.

" The case I am going to relate happened more than 50 years ago.
Myself and wife had been to her brother's to see their little daughter, aged
about two years, who was thought to be dying. It was evident when we
saw her that she could not last long. We left about 10 o'clock at night,
and retired to bed, and settled quietly to go to sleep. But before we could
do so we heard a startling scream — a sort of death-scream l — on the pillow
between us. We each thought the other was taken ill, and turned in
alarm, and found that the noise was not aroused by either of us. I turned
the matter off as best I could, not to alarm my wife. In the morning she
said to me, ' That was a curious noise we heard last night ; what could it
have been ? ' I said, ' Little Mary died last night at that time, and that
was the noise she made before she died,' which proved to be the fact. I
imitated the noise the same evening, and the child's mother exclaimed,
' How strange ! that was the exact scream made by my child before she died.'

" These things, when they occur, take a deep hold on us, and although
it happened more than 52 years ago, we both of us remember it as freshly
as if it were but a year ago."

In answer to inquiry, Mr. Stephenson adds : —

" The death-cry of the child was heard by us at the precise time of her
death, and the mother (who has been dead more than 30 years) recognised
the cry I imitated as the last cry of her dear child."

To a request for his wife's written corroboration, Mr. Stephenson
replies : —

" I am sorry that I cannot comply with your request. My dear wife
is a confirmed invalid and cannot be persuaded to do what you wish. You
are not to suppose that there is any doubt as to the truth of what I related
to you."

(679) From the mother of a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge,
who desires that her name may not be published. et 1884.

" On the 15th of May, 1829, my mother, myself, and a servant were in
the hall, when we heard a loud groan. We were somewhat startled, and
a short time after we heard the groan repeated, but louder. We then,
looked about the garden and in the street, but could see nothing. We had
just returned to the house, when a third time 2 the groan was repeated, hut
still louder. We were much startled, and again looked about to find the

1 It is very doubtful, of course, whether this particular description would have been
given but for the fact of the death, which was afterwards ascertained.

2 See p. 229, note.

636 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

cause, but to no purpose. Shortly after, my brother came in, in breath-
less haste, to tell his mother that his grandfather was thrown from his
horse, and nearly killed. The dear old man died the same night."

We find from a copy of a tombstone in Loughton churchyard, that the
death occurred on May 16th (not 15th), 1829. The parish-clerk tells us
that the accident took place about 100 yards from his house.

(680) From Mr. Charles H. Kallensee, Groan House, Sladesbridge,
Cornwall.

" December 30th, 1882.

" In the year 1841, an elder brother of mine died, at Princess Street,
Devonport. When I returned from school on the day of his death, I was
told to go to his room, as he had inquired for me. On entering the room,
I found a great change in him since the morning, and I, who had never
seen death, yet knew that he was dying. In the room were my father and
mother ; my father standing at the side of my brother's bed, while my dear
mother sat weeping near the foot. I took a seat near my mother's side.

" It might have been an hour or more that we remained thus, listening
to the breathing of my brother, expecting each breath to be the last. I
remember it was a beautiful afternoon, and the sun shone into the room
and across my brother's bed. Suddenly there were three violent blows or
concussions, so violent that I felt the room shake. My mother sprang to
her feet, and with excitement exclaimed, ' There it is again ' ; at the same
time I saw my father stooping down and turning back the carpet that
went round the bed. My own feeling was one of wonder and curiosity,
and on looking at my brother, I saw he was dead. My father's stooping
down and examining the carpet was explained by him, after he had felt the
third blow strike him at the bottom of his foot ; while my mother's excla-
mation, ' There it is again,' was because she had heard similar manifesta-
tions at the death of other members of her family. I know nothing of
Spiritualism per se ; I never attended any meeting or seances on the
subject, therefore cannot say whether the knocking I heard was of that
character ; but of this I am quite certain, that no known power produced
the noise. " CHARLES H. KALLENSEE."

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death occurred on
October 21, 1841.

In answer to an inquiry whether he had ever experienced hallucina-
tions of the senses on other occasions, Mr. Kallensee replied : —

" I have not met with any similar manifestations. I can scarcely call
it a ' knocking,' as it seemed to fill,and even shake, the room. The sound was
as of a stick being broken, but much louder,and powerful. My father felt the
last blow at the bottom of his foot, and almost the first thing I remember,
after my wonder had passed, was seeing him stooping down and examining
the carpet under his feet. My mother told us children afterwards, on
several occasions, that she had heard similar noises at the death of
her father and brother. My mother was an educated woman, and far
from superstitious ; and yet she could not but believe in this."

(681) From Mr. H. C. Hurry, C.E., 60, Lawford Road, Kentish

Town, N.W.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 637

"January 4th, 1884.

" Many years ago I lodged with an old lady, her son and daughter, of
the name of Spencer, in Manchester. In conversation they frequently
told me that on the occasion of the death of any member of their family,
one or more of them invariably had some monition of it. This I treated
with a considerable amount of scepticism. One morning they received
a letter from Ormskirk, near Liverpool, informing them that the young
people's aunt was very ill. The son at once went off to see her. That
night I had gone upstairs to bed, my room being up one flight, and
immediately opposite to the front door ; whilst I was undressing I heard
a very loud knock, as though given with the hand, not the knocker.
Miss Spencer immediately came out of the sitting-room, and called, saying,
' Mr. Hurry, did you knock down ? ' I answered, ' No, it was at the hall-
door.' She went and opened it, and at once said, on finding no one there,
' Good God ! my aunt's dead.' Without saying anything to them, I wrote
down the exact time, about 11 p.m., so far as I can remember. By the
first post possible, they received a letter from young Spencer, informing
them the aunt had died exactly at the time I- had noted, allowing for the
difference of mean-time, by which watches were then regulated. I should
add that I was in no way related to the Spencers."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Hurry says : —

" I do not know of any of the Spencer family ; the old lady, her son and
daughter, I mentioned, having long been dead. The circumstance I named
occurred in the year 1841, but as I was a party to it I consider my evidence
first-hand. You next ask me whether I have had ' any auditory
hallucinations.' I cannot remember any but the one I give you."

We find from the Register of Deaths that a Mrs. Spencer, who is pro-
bably the person mentioned in this case, died at Ormskirk in 1841.

[This case could, of course, have no claim at all to attention, but for
its analogy to others, as there is no sufficient proof that the sound was not
a real knock. If it was a hallucination, Mr. Hurry's share in the
experience cannot be accounted for as the subjective effect of strain and
anxiety.]

(682) From Mr. W. Hillstead, a teacher of music, who, at the time
when he gave us the account, in 1884, was acting as care-taker in a large
house at Cambridge.

• " In October, 1848, I was sitting with my mother in 8, Suffolk Place,
Pall Mall East. The house was empty except for ourselves. The room
was mainly lighted by a large skylight. The house was quite quiet. It
was rather dark on an October day. Suddenly we were both startled by a
terrifying noise, as if a cartload of gravel had been shot down from a
height on to the skylight. I jumped up in startled alarm, thinking that
the skylight was, of course, smashed to pieces by the stones which I had
actually heard falling on it. There was not the slightest trace of anything
unusual. My mother, who had had many warnings of different kinds, was
less alarmed. She took for granted that someone was dead, but we could
neither of us think who it could be, as we knew of no one who was ill.
" Some days afterwards, a cousin of mine called, and told us that his

638 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

brother Richard was dead. We asked when he died, and found that it was
at dusk on the very afternoon on which we heard the crash. My mother
had been very fond of the young man, and so was I. Of late he had gone
wrong, and we had seen less of him. " WILLIAM HILLSTEAD."

[Unfortunately the information necessary to enable us to verify the
death was not asked for at the time ; nor was an address obtained to which
we might subsequently write. The narrative was certainly given in good
faith ; but its only force, again, depends on its analogy to other cases.]

As regards the curious form of the impression in the following
case, see the remarks on case 625, pp. 572-3.

(683) From Mrs. Windridge, Sutton Villa, 99, Albert Road, Dalston, E.

"November 9th, 1882.

"In or about the year 1861, I, being weary and worn, first through
the long illness and then the depression and inertness of my husband,
complained to a lady friend, Mrs. H., whose husband had frequently
remonstrated with mine for what appeared to be his laziness. My friend,
having a strong sympathy for me, urged her husband to obtain a situation
for him. He said, ' I will kill him for her ' ; and procured my husband
work which he believed would place his life in danger.

" Three years after, Mr. H. lay dangerously ill ; at his request I had
gone over to see him, and found him in a most excited state ; he entreated
me to use all my influence to induce my husband to leave the situation he
had procured, as he feared it would ultimately cause his death.

" Some weeks afterwards my husband and I were awoke by the noise,
apparently, of someone endeavouring to open our bedroom door. The
noise was quite loud, as if the intruder could not open it readily, and did
not care who heard him. My husband listened for a while, and then
opened the door with a light in his hand. There was nothing there, but
immediately there was the sound of a large dog entering, and scratching
on the floor at his feet. My husband searched the house, but we could
find nothing. It was just 2 a.m. A day or two afterwards I heard of
his death that night. The widow, whom I went to see, told me that, in
her own words, he ' died twice.' When, as they thought, already dead, —
they began to lay him out, — he opened his eyes, and muttered something
about ' Windridge.' ' What time was this 1 ' I asked. ' Just 2 a.m.,' she said.

"E. WINDRIDGE."

Mr. Windridge corroborates as follows : —

" One night, having retired in the ordinary way, we were aroused by
a shaking and scratching at the bedroom door, so distinct and impressive
that we began to be alarmed, and I arose, and striking a light, went to
the door, and opened it. With an exclamation I started back. Something
touched my feet. Something seemed, as it were, to be grovelling at my
feet, but I could see nothing. I then searched the house and found all
undisturbed, as we left it. I looked at the time ; it was 2 o'clock. I could
not sleep any more that night.

" The next day I heard that a man, who had expressed to my wife that
he would do a great wrong to me, had died. I informed my wife, and she
said she would visit the widow. She went, and Mrs. H., in relating the

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 639

incidents most remarkable in her husband's death, informed her that he
had died, as it were, twice ; for after he was pronounced dead, and the
nurse was laying him out, he seemed to return to life, and murmured the
name ' Windridge.' Life was not extinct for a quarter of an hour after
this. Mrs. H. informed my wife that her husband died at 2 o'clock, the
time I looked at my watch. « j$ WINDRIDGE "

We find from the Register of Deaths that the death took place on
September 14, 1863.

In conversation, Mr. Windridge informed Mr. Podmore that he had
never experienced any other hallucination. Mrs. Windridge has experi-
enced one other, which was of a singular kind, and is described in the
Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. III., p. 89.

Mr. Windridge could not clearly remember having been touched, as he
puts it in his letter ; he can only be sure that he had the impression of
something grovelling at his feet. That impression may, however, have
been conveyed by sound only. Mrs. Windridge states that he told her at
the time that he had been touched.

The following is a further specimen of the musical class,1 parallel
to No. 388. With respect to its place in the present collection, I
must again refer to pp. 190-2.

(684) A gentleman who is a master at Eton College wrote to us, on
Feb. 3, 1884 :—

" I enclose a copy of a memorandum made a few days after the event
referred to. My memorandum has been copied for me by Miss H., whose
name occurs in it. She is my matron ; a sensible, middle-aged, active, and
experienced woman. None of the people concerned were young, flighty, or
fanciful. I have the doctor's letter ; his name is G., and he still resides
here. Miss H. only wishes to add that it must have occurred from 20
minutes to perhaps 30 after dissolution, and she says that she has never
heard anything like the extreme sweetness of the sound.

" H. E. L."
The memorandum is as follows : —

"Eton College.

"August 6th, 1881.

"• I wish to write down, before there is time for confusion, the follow-
ing fact, occurring on Thursday morning, July 28, 1881, when my dear
mother died, whom God rest ! After all was over, Miss E. I., Eliza W.,
Dr. G., and myself being in the room, Miss I. heard a sound of ' very

1 In a case which E. M. Arndt (Schriftcn fur und an seine Lieben Deutschen, 1845, ,
Vol. iii., pp. 525-6) records, with names and details, on the first-hand authority of a family*
whom he highly esteemed, the music of a guitar was heard, first by two daughters of the
house, and then by their father and a large group of persons, at the time of the death in
battle of an officer who had been staying with the family a little time before, and had
delighted them by his performances on that instrument. But there is no sufficient state-
ment of the grounds on which the hearers were convinced (as they undoubtedly were)
that the sounds were not due to any objective cause in the vicinity. The house was
searched ; but there is no mention of inquiries in the environs.

640 SUPPLEMENT. [CHAP.

low, soft music, exceedingly sweet, as if of three girls' voices, passing
by the house.' She described further the sound as if girls were going
home singing, only strangely low and sweet ; it seemed to come from the
street, past the house towards the College buildings (the road ends
there in a cul-de-sac), and so passed away. She looked to call my
attention, and thought I perceived it. She noticed that the doctor
heard it, and that he went to the window to look out. The window
faces S.E. Eliza W. being in the room at the same time heard a sound
of very low, sweet singing. She recognised the tune and words of the
hymn. ' The strife is o'er, the battle done.' Miss I. recognised no tune,
but felt 'that the music sounded, as it were, familiar.' As a very
accomplished musician, especially remarkable for her quick memory of
music, had words or air been those of a well-known hymn, she would
almost certainly have remembered it. These two spoke to each other
when alone about what they had heard. Miss I. gives the time at about
10 minutes after my dear mother expired. They were then unaware of
this additional circumstance. Miss H. had left the room, and had sum-
moned Charlotte C., with whom she had procured something required for
laying out the body. As the two returned upstairs they heard a sound of
music, and both stopped. Charlotte said to Miss H., ' What is this 1 '
After a pause she said, ' It must be Miss I. singing to comfort master.'
They afterwards entered the room, of which the door had been shut all
along. Charlotte further described the sound as very sweet and low,
seeming to pass by them. She felt as if, .had she only been able to listen,
she could have distinguished the words. It did not occur to her that her
description was most incongruous ; she could not listen attentively, but
felt ' as if rapture were all around her.' It was not until afterwards, when
she mentioned to Eliza having heard Miss I. singing, and how strangely it
sounded, that they found that each had heard the sound. Miss H.
described the sound as very peculiar and sweet, seeming to pass by them
and pass away, as they both stopped on the stairs. All the staircase
windows give north-west. I heard nothing,1 and I should have given no
weight to a sound heard or described by these women in the room after
communicating with each other, or by these women out of the room
respectively; but the coincidence of each party hearing it separately and
independently without previous communication, as well as the matter-of-
fact explanation suggested for it by one of them seeming to imply that
their thoughts were not dwelling on the supernatural, added so much weight
to this account that I wrote to the doctor, who answers : — ' I quite
remember hearing the singing you mention ; it was so peculiar that I
went to the window and looked out, but although quite light I could see no
one, and cannot therefore account for it.' The time must have been about
2 a.m. on July 28th, 1881."

Miss I. writes : —

" 13, Park Street, Windsor.

" February 22nd, 1884.

" I will copy the memorandum which I made in my diary just after the
death of my dear friend and connection, Mrs. L.

1 Compare case 666, and see p. 105, second note.

ix.] COLLECTIVE CASES. 641

"July 28th, 1881.

" Just after dear Mrs. L.'s death between 2 and 3 a.m., I heard
a most sweet and singular strain of singing outside the windows ; it died
away after passing the house. All in the room heard it, and the medical
attendant, who was still with us, went to the window as I did, and looked
out, but there was nobody. It was a bright and beautiful night. It was
as if several voices were singing in perfect unison a most sweet melody,
which died away in the distance. Two persons had gone from the room
to fetch something, and were coming upstairs at the back of the house, and
heard the singing and stopped, saying, ' What is that singing ? ' They
could not natwrally have heard any sound outside the windows in the
front of the house from where they were. I cannot think that any
explanation can be given to this — as I think — supernatural singing ; but
it would be very interesting to me to know what is said by those who
have made such matters a subject of study.

"E. I."

Dr. G. writes in 1884:—

"Eton, Windsor.

" I remember the circumstance perfectly. Poor Mrs. L. died on
July 28th, 1881. I was sent for at about midnight, and remained until
her death at about 2.30 a.m. As there was no qualified nurse present, I
remained and assisted the friends to ' lay out ' the body. Four or five of
us assisted, and at my request the matron of Mr. L.'s house and a servant
went to the kitchen department to find a shutter or flat board upon which
to place the body. Soon after their departure, and whilst we were waiting
for their return, we distinctly heard a few bars of lovely music— not unlike
that from an ./Eolian harp — which seemed to fill the air for a few seconds.
I went to the window and looked out, thinking there must be someone
outside, but could see no one, although it was quite light and clear.
Strangely enough, those who went to the kitchen heard the same sounds
as they were coming upstairs, quite at the other side of the door. These
are the facts, and I think it right to tell you that I have not the slightest
belief in the supernatural, Spiritualism, &c., &c.

"J. W. G."

[The fact that Mr. L. did not share the experience is strong evidence
that the sounds were not objectively caused by persons singing outside the
house ; and this is further confirmed by the slight difference which there
appears to have been between the impressions received.]

END OF THE SUPPLEMENT.

VOL. II. 2 T

ADDITIONAL CHAPTER

OF CASES RECEIVED TOO LATE FOR INSERTION IN THEIR
PROPER PLACES.

§ 1. THE printing and revision of these volumes have occupied a
considerable time ; and meanwhile several items of evidence have
been received too late for insertion in the chapters to which they
properly belong. They fall under the three classes, already distin-
guished, of experimental, transitional, and spontaneous cases. I
will begin with some cases of the first class, which sufficiently show
that the experiments described at the opening of the treatise admit
of being repeated and varied with success.

The following results were sent to us at the close of last year, by
Herr Max Dessoir, of 27, Kothener-Strasse, Berlin. He has devoted
a good deal of time to experimenting with a few friends, he himself
almost always acting as percipient. He began with trials of the
"willing-game" type, and soon convinced himself that slight muscular
hints were the full and sufficient explanation of all the ordinary
" thought-reading " exhibitions. He then introduced forms of experi-
ment which offered no opportunity for unconscious guidance on the
agent's part — such as the guessing of numbers, words, and cards,
without any contact between agent and percipient. These trials,
though the amount of success was above what could with probability
be ascribed to chance, were not numerous enough to justify any
definite conclusion. But a series of trials in the reproduction of
diagrams affords an interesting parallel to those described in Vol. I.,
pp. 37-51. The agent was in some cases Herr E. Weiss, of
28, Wilhelm-Strasse, Berlin (a fellow-student with Herr Dessoir at the
Berlin University); in others Herr H. Biltz, of 14, Schelling-Strasse,
Berlin ; and in one case (No. 7) Herr W. Sachse, of 2, Kirchbach-
Strasse, Berlin. (Herr Weiss and Herr Biltz are known to us, through
correspondence, independently of these experiments.) All three
gentlemen have sent us certificates of the accuracy of the record of
the experiments in which they were respectively concerned.

ADDITIONAL CHAPTER. 643

Herr Dessoir thus describes the conditions of the trials : —

" While the agent drew the original, I was almost always out of the
room, to avoid being influenced by the sound of the drawing. When the
agent called out ' Ready,' I came in, with eyes closely bandaged — the
bandage being made to cover the ears, so as to shut out casual sounds. I
set myself at the table, and in many instances placed my hands on the
table, and the agent placed his hands on mine : the hands lay quite still on
one another.1 When an image presented itself in my mind, the hands
were removed, the original drawing [on which the agent had been fixing
his eyes] was turned over, or covered with a book, and I took off the
bandage and drew my figure. Many of the experiments were made
without contact, even though no note to that effect was made."

As regards the cases where there were two or three attempts at
reproduction, Herr Dessoir says, that after he had had a clear image in
his mind, and had removed the bandage, the image would sometimes
lose its clearness, and that he was sensible that the figures which he
produced did not correspond with it, and so tried again. Still, as no
doubt the agent would have told him if the earlier attempt had been
successful, and he would not then have made another, every incorrect
attempt must count as simply a failure.

The following woodcuts, which have been very carefully copied
from the original sheets, include all the trials in which Herr Dessoir
was himself the percipient, with the exception of two, (one, to the
eye, a success, and the other a failure,) omitted on account of some
uncertainty as to the conditions. Nos. iii., vi., and x., in which Herr
H. Biltz was the percipient, must be set against three complete
failures on his part. The series given contains a considerable pro-
portion of failure; but if the reader will draw 19 figures of about
an equal degree of complexity, and get a friend to do the same, and
will then compare each figure of one series with the corresponding
one of the other, he will realise the improbability of obtaining by
mere chance, in so short a set, 9 resemblances as close as those in
Nos. i., iv., vi., vii., xi., xiii., xv., xvii. and xviii., below.

1 It is important to observe the fundamental difference between contact which
continues while the writing or drawing is going on (as in the writing of the figures of bank-
notes, which is a favourite trick in the public " thought-reading " exhibitions), where
what the performer receives from the innocent " wilier " is delicate muscular guidance
from moment to moment ; and contact which ceases before the attempt at reproduction '
commences, and which could only betray the required figure if the hand of the agent (which
seems both to himself and to the percipient to be perfectly still) were moved on that of
the percipient in such a way as to draw the required shape. I have reason to believe that
certain figures may be thus indicated without the agent's consciousness ; but it seems to
me unlikely that they could be unconsciously perceived — at any rate by an observer who,
like Herr Dessoir, has devoted special pains to analysing his impressions and discovering
their source.

VOL. II. 2x2

644

CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

'ORIGINAL.

Agent : H. B.

REPRODUCTION.

OHIO.

Agent : H. B.

II.

REP. 1.

REP. 2.

III.

REP.

OKIG.

Agent's name omitted.

It appears here that the agent's
image included an impression of the
left part of the frame. M. D.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES.

645

IV.

ORIG

REP.

Agent : H. B.

ORIG.

Agent : H. B.

REP. 2. REP. 4.

REP. 1. REP. 3.

646 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

VI.
ORIG.

Agent : M. D.

REP. 2.

VII.

ORIG

REP. 1. REP. 2.

J

While the second reproduction was proceeding,
an interruption occurred which prevented its
completion.

Agent: W. S.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES,

647

REP. 1.

Agent : H. B.
REP. 2. REP. 3.

REP. 4.

ORIG.

Agent : H. B.

IX.

REP. 1. REP. 2.

REP. 3.

The percipient said, " It looks like a window.

ORIG.

REP. 3.

REP. 1. REP. 2.

Agent : M. D

V

648 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

ORIQ.

Agent : H. B.

REP. 2.

RKP. 1.

REP. 3.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES.

649

Agent : H. B.

REP. 1.

REP. 2.

ORIG.

XIII.
REP. 1.

REP. 2.

Agent : E. W.

The percipient said, " It looks like a window."

650 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

XIV.
ORIG. REP. 1. REP. 2.

Agent : E. \V.

REP. 3.

ORIG.

Agent : E. W.

XV.

REP. 2. REP. 3.

- S

The first attempt at reproduction appears to have
been a failure.

ORIG.

XVI.

REP. 1. REP. 2. REP. 3.

Agent : E. W.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES.

651

OEIG.

Agent: E. W.

REP. 2.

OBIG.

REP. 2.

Agent : E. W.

The percipient said, " I see two bright triangles, but
I cannot tell exactly how the second is situated."

ORIG.

XIX.

REP. 1.

REP. 2.

REP. 3.

Agent : E. W.

The following shorter record is taken from the monthly journal
Sphinx (Leipzig), for June, 1886, and we have not seen the original
diagrams. The experiments were made at the house of Baron Dr. von
Ravensburg, whose wife was the percipient. Herr Max Dessoir drew
the originals on the spur of the moment, out of the Baroness von
Ravensburg's sight, and taking care that his pencil should move
noiselessly. He and the Baron then concentrated their attention on
the figure, which the Baroness, sitting at another table, endeavoured
to reproduce, after a time varying from 20 to 45 seconds. (The Baron
did not take part in the first experiment, which, it will be seen, was a
failure.)

652

CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

REP. 1.

REP. 2.

OBIG.

II.

REP. 1.

REP. 2.

III.

ORIG.

REP.

The correction was made by the

percipient before th« original was

shown to her.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES.
OKIG. IV. REP.

653

V.

REP.

ORIG.

The percipient said, " It is a circle outside, and there is something else inside it ; "
then, after a pause, " A triangle." She then drew the reproduction, and added that the
circle was an imperfect one.

With respect to these experiments, the Baron and Baroness von
Ravensburg have sent a note of corroboration, of which the following is
a translation : —

" 18, Zietenstrasse, Berlin, W.

"July 9, 1886.

" We certify that the report of our sitting for a trial of thought-
transference, which appeared in the sixth number of Sphinx, is throughout
in correspondence with the facts, and has been drawn up with complete
accuracy. " FKEIHERR GOELER VON RAVENSBURG.

" ELIZABETH, FREIFRAU GOELER VON RAVENSBURG."

The following is a set of 400 trials, made in batches of 40 or 50
at a time, in June, 1886, by the Misses Wingfield, whose former
experiments have been described in Vol. I., p. 34. The ninety num-
bers which contain two digits were inscribed on ninety slips of paper,
and placed in a bowl. Miss M. Wingfield, sitting six feet behind the
percipient, drew a slip at random, and fixed her attention on the num-
ber which it bore ; Miss K. Wingfield made a guess at the number;
and the real number and the guess made were at once recorded in the
Table. The slip of paper was then replaced, the contents of the bowl
shuffled, and another draw made at hap-hazard. The most probable
number of right guesses for accident to bring about in the 400

654

CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

trials was 4. The actual number of completely right guesses was
27; in 21 other cases the two right digits were given in reverse order:
and in 162 others, one of the digits was given rightly in its right
place. The probability which this result affords for a cause other than
chance is represented by 47 nines and a 5 following a decimal point ;
i.e., the odds are nearly two hundred thousand million trillions of
trillions to 1. It would be a very inadequate statement of the case
to say that, if the waking hours of the whole population of the
world were for the future continuously devoted to making similar
trials, life on this planet would come to an end without such an amount
of success, or anything like it, having been accidentally obtained.

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14

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67

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70

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<?0

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t-4
18

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES, 655

The next account is from the Eev. Canon Lefroy, Incumbent of St

Andrew's, Liverpool. The percipient, Miss , is known to Mr. Myers

and the present writer. Her bona fides is above suspicion; but her
state of health has unfortunately prevented further experimentation.

"1885.

"Early in September, 1884, in Zermatt, I was, through the kindness

of Miss , permitted to have an opportunity of testing, by personal

observation, experience, and evidence, the reality or otherwise of what is,
I believe, called telepathy. I am bound to say that when I was informed,
and most kindly informed, of what was proposed to be done, the innate
scepticism of my nature rose to its highest.

" I was informed that the eyes of Miss would be tightly bandaged,

and I saw them bandaged ; that in this darkened state, mental or ocular
perception — probably the latter l — would, nevertheless, enable her to read
any word written by me on a slip of paper. There might be mistake ; there
might be literal transposition [? transposition of letters] ; there might be
delay ; but, speaking broadly, I was assured that the word could be
discerned. We sat at opposite sides of the table. I was desired to hold
the lady's hand. I did so, and while so doing 1 exerted my will to the
utmost, and to the intent that, if possible, the conflict of wills should
result in favour of my scepticism. I must, with shame and humiliation,
confess that my incredulity and volitional resistance did not hesitate to
select a word which my gifted antagonist probably never heard of ; and
accordingly I defiantly, confidently, and I will add, mercilessly, wrote the
name of Terence's old play — Heautontimorumenos. The completion of my
word was followed by a prolonged pause. I felt as if breathing was an
intrusion, and not a sound was heard. At last the blinded, and I thought
the wearied, or at least strained, interpreter said, ' What a long word ! '
Then a pause. Then as follows : 'Why — two, four, six, eight — there are
eighteen letters in that word!'

" Unconsciously my resisting power became less than it was, and it
decreased from the moment Miss said, 'What a long word ! ' Never-
theless, the long pause seemed to give me a chance, and again I gathered
up my mind to resolve that detection should be arrested. But very soon
this purpose was foiled ; the lady calmly said, ' That word has two m's to
it ; it begins with an h ; and I never saw that word before.' I felt very
guilty as I observed what I thought were signs of fatigue, and then
declared the word was unusual — ill-known, and asked that the bandage
might be removed.

" In a few moments I was allowed to try with simpler words. Again
the bandage was applied, the word was written, and our hands were
clasped. I wrote the word ink. In about one minute the word was read,
thus, *k, n, i ; your word is ink.'

11 Again I was most kindly allowed to try another word. I wrote
toy. In a minute the word was read thus, ' y, o, t ; your word is toy."2 '

1 See p. 48, note.

2 The following note, by Mr. Myers, of a trial made in 1884, with the same percipient,
exhibits the same curious reversal of letters ; which might be compared with the production
of anagrams, and of independent and phonetic spelling, in automatic writing (Vol. i.,
pp. 76-8, and below, p. 665). " I asked Miss to try some experiments in thought-trans-

656 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

The experience then closed, so far as this species of discovery was
concerned. " WILLIAM LEPROY, M.A."

In answer to inquiries, Canon Lefroy writes, on June 17, 1886 : —

" Abercromby Square, Liverpool.

" I believe I wrote the letters under the cover of my left hand.

Miss could not possibly descry them. My own inflexible scepticism

respecting her power provided, I can assure you, a ready safeguard against
anything she might have been disposed to do under the peculiar circum-
stances of the experiment. I am, to this hour, a most unwilling believer
in her possession of some force which revealed what she could not see, and
which disclosed what I resolved should be impenetrable."

Miss Hamilton, of 47, Albert Mansions, Kensington Gore, W., a
Member of the S.P.R., sends (in June, 1886,) the following record of
an impromptu trial, of the sort which we wish we could persuade
more people to make. In such a case as this, contact, though better
avoided, can scarcely be held to afford the opportunity for unconscious
physical hints. One reservation unfortunately must be made : the
record was not drawn up in writing ac the time. But Miss Hamilton
tells us that the details were then and there carefully gone over, with a
view to the present report ; and we have several memories to rely on.

" Experiment between Miss Leila Melvill [now Mrs. Lewis Hamilton]
and Mr. Lewis Hamilton, September, 1885.

" Miss L. M., eyes lightly bandaged with a silk handkerchief, was
' willed ' by Mr. Hamilton. He placed his hands on her forehead, and
willed intently that she should read the [printed] words, A Sermon, at
which he gazed steadily all the time he willed. She said, slowly, A ; then
spelled the first few letters of ' Sermon,' and then said the whole word.

"The same evening she read in the same manner these words,
County Families. Later on, in November, the same experiment was
tried, and she read the unusual words, Chatto and Windus. Each experi-
ment took about three minutes. Amongst the witnesses present were : —

"MARY C. D. HAMILTON.
" A. MELVILL [sister of the percipient].
" LILLIAS HAMILTON."

The agent and percipient also sign the account.

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Hamilton writes, on June 25, 1886 : —
"Lansdowne, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood.

(1) "Had the subject's eyes been unbandaged, she could have un-
doubtedly seen the words ; but not only were they tightly bandaged, but
my fingers were placed on her closed eyelids, so that she could not even

ference with her sister. She soon told me that the experiments had succeeded, but with this
strange peculiarity, that, when the sister fixed her eyes on some word, Miss K. saw its
letters appear in her field of mental vision in reverse order. Miss K. was, unfortunately,
very liable to headache, which these experiments quickly induced, and I was only allowed
one short series of trials. I placed the word NET behind her, and looked fixedly at the
letters. She said that she saw successively the letters T, E, N. I next chose SEA, and
she saw A, E, S. I chose a third word, but she saw no mental image, and headache
stopped the experiments."

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 657

have opened them, had there been no bandage. On one occasion the
words she read were held above the subject's head, so that she could not
in any case have seen. [Miss Hamilton independently confirms this.] I
may say, however, that in no single case was there any possibility of her
having seen the words. The words, and book, or pamphlet, from which
they were read, were chosen after her eyes were bandaged, and out of
her sight, and they were not whispered from one witness to the other, but
shown round.

(2) " In no instance did she fail with me, but when Mr. Hope tried
her one evening, she failed, and on another occasion (one) she said almost
at once she could not do it that evening. The experiment was tried a
good many times, and except for the above, always succeeded.

(3) " For about six months we did not try again, and on the two
occasions we have tried lately, she has said she could not do it. We,
however, do intend to try again. « LEWIS HAMILTON."

The following records of experiments have been sent to us by our
friend Dr. Li£beault, of Nancy, a Corresponding Member of the
S.P.R.

" Oompte-rendu des experiences de transmission de pens^es, faites le 10
Decembre, 1885, de 3 heures a 4 heures et demie du soir, chez M. le Dr.
Liebeault, en presence de M. le Dr. Liebeault, de Madame S., et de M. le
Dr. Brullard. Operateur, M. le Professeur Lie"geois ; sujet, Mile. M.,
20 ans.

"1. Mile. M., tres intelligente et impressionable, est habitude a etre
endormie et entre tres vite en etat de somnambulisme, pendant lequel elle
est en rapport avec tous les assistants.

" M. le Professeur Lie"geois la met en e"tat de somnambulisme
hypnotique, et lui suggere de n'etre en rapport qu'avec lui seul ; il lui
donne du papier et un crayon, et lui commande de faire la meme chose que
lui. Alors il se rend a une table voisine et dessine un triangle sur un
registre, dont la couverture releve"e forme un e"cran entre lui et le sujet,
et intercepte toute communication visuelle. Aussit6t Mile. M. e"crit de son
c6te, ' Les grands hommes.' Le re*sultat est done nul.

" 2. En second lieu M. Liegeois dit au sujet, toujours en somnambulisme,
1 Je dessine un objet,' et dans les memes conditions que precedemment, il
dessine une carafe. Le sujet dit aussit6t, ' C'est un vase,' et elle dessine
un vase de forme carree. ' Ce n'est pas cela,' dit M. Liegeois. Alors
Mile. M. dessine un objet de meme forme que la carafe, mais difforme, vu
qu'ayant les yeux ferines elle pla9ait ses traits au juger. Le resultat est
done exact.1

" 3. En troisieme lieu, ' Je dessine quelque chose,' dit M. Liegeois,
et il figure un bonhomme. Le sujet, dans le meme e"tat passif, dit
successivement, ' C'est un dessin d'ornement,' et elle commence & tracer
quelques traits ; puis sur une re*ponse negative, ' On croirait une
boussole — un arbre — une maison.' Resultat nul. A ce moment M.
Liegeois reveille Mile. M. avec la suggestion de tres bien voir a son re" veil

1 The drawings have been sent to us, and entirely accord with Dr. Lie"beault's
description.

VOL. II. 2 U

658 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

le dernier objet dessine, et des ce moment elle est en communication avec
les assistants. ' Je ne sais pas,' ditMlle. M., et apres quelques minutes,
' C'est une tete,' que sur demande elle figure de profil. Alors on lui dit
que c'e'tait un bonhomme. 'Eh bien ! ' re'pond elle, 'ma premiere im-
pression a e'te' de faire un bonhomme, mais j'ai craint que 1'on ne se
moquat de moi.'

"4. Mile. M. restant reVeilleX M. Lie'geois retourne a sa table et
dessine une table carree vue en perspective, avec un tiroir et son bouton ;
puis, apres avoir montre" silencieusement son dessin a chaque assistant en
particulier, il place ses deux mains sur la tete du sujet et lui dit,
' Maintenant vous allez deviner ce que je viens de faire.' Apres moins
de deux minutes de reflexion, ' C'est une table,' dit-elle ; ' elle est ronde
— pas tout-a-fait.' Sur demande de la dessiner, elle dessine peu-a-peu une
table exactement semblable et dans la meme position, avec le tiroir et son
bouton. Resultat exact.

" 5. Mile. M., qui, comme aucun assistant, n'a vu le dessin, est en
rapport avec M. Liegeois seul. M. Lie'geois dessine un cube. Mile. M. dit
spontanement, ' C'est une lampe.' M. Lie'geois lui met les mains
sur la tete. ' C'est une chaise,' dit-elle. M. Lie'geois lui fixe les yeux sur
les siens et lui tient la main. 'Je ne sais pas.' Alors le dessin est
montrd aux assistants. ' C'est un chapeau,' dit-elle. Mile. M. est mise
de nouveau en somnambulisme. ' Je veux que vous voyiez le dessin,' dit
M. Liegeois. ' C'est un petit bureau.' ' Non.' ' Oh, il y a des Carre's —
oui,' et elle dessine deux Carre's, 1'un audessous de 1'autre. ' Oe n'est
pas cela,' et comme elle ne trouve pas, apres quelques minutes, ' Quel
est 1'objet ou il y a des Carre's ? ' ' Je ne sais pas.' ' C'est un cube. ' ' Ah,
c'est vrai ; je voulais le faire.' Pendant Fexpe'rience, M. le Dr. Lie'beault
avait ajoute' des points figurant un dd. Done rdsultat me'diocre.

" 6. Mile. M., e"tant toujours en e'tat de sommeil hypnotique, M.
Lie'geois dessine une croix. 'II y a un carreY dit Mile. M. (C'e'tait vrai ;
la croix dtait dessine'e dans un carre*.) ' Mais qu'y a-t-il dedans ? '
demande M. Liegeois. ' C'est un verre — non — une e'toile — non — un
triangle. Cependant il y a trois traits.' Enfin elle figure successivement
un angle, puis une croix de S. Andrd, quand on lui cut dit de laisser
aller son crayon sans s'en occuper. Resultat a peu pres nul.

" 7. M. Liegeois e'crit le mot mariage. Mile. M. e'crit de suite,
' Monsieur.' Puis elle dit, ' Carafe — non — tableau — non.' ' Quelle est la
lettre ? ' ' C'est un I — non, c'est un m.' Puis, apres quelques minutes de
reflexion, ' II y a dans le mot un — i — un a apres I'm — un g — un autre
a — un e — il y a six lettres — non — sept.' Quand elle eut trouve* toutes les
lettres et leur places, ma iage, elle ne put de'couvrir la lettre r. Ce n'est
qu'apres plusieurs minutes qu'on lui dit d'essayer les combinaisons avec
les diffeYens consonnes, et enfin slle e'crit mariage. Resultat me'diocre."

" Proces-verbal relatant trois faits dtonnants de suggestion mentale,
obtenus par MM. Lie'beault et De Guaita, au domicile du Dr. Lie'beault (4,
rue Bellevue, Nancy), le 9 Janvier, 1886.

" Nous soussigne's Lie'beault (Ambroise), docteur en me'decine, et De
Guaita (Stanislas), homme de lettres, tous deux demeurant actuellement a
Nancy, attestons et certifions avoir obtenus les re'sultats suivants.

" 1. Mile. Louise L., endormie du sommeil magne'tique, fut informee

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 659

qu'elle allait avoir a repondre a une question qui lui serait faite mentale-
ment sans 1'intervention d'aucune parole ni d'aucun signe. Le Dr.
Liebeault, la main appuye'e au front du sujet, se recueillit un instant,
concentrant sa propre attention sur la demande, Quand serez-vous guerie ?
qu'il avait la volont^ de faire. Les levres de la somnambule remuerent
soudain : ' Bientdt,' raurmura-t-elle distinctement. On 1'invita alors a
rep^ter devant toutes les personnes pre"sentes, la question qu'elle avait
intuitivement perdue. Elle la redit dans les terrnes memes, ou elle avait
e"te formulae dans 1'esprit de 1'expeVimentateur. Cette premiere experience,
entreprise par le Dr. Lie'beault, a 1'instigation de M. de Guaita, reussit
done pleinement. Une seconde epreuve donna des re"sultats moins
rigoureux mais plus curieux peut-etre encore, ainsi qu'on va voir.

" 2. M. de Guaita, s'etant mis en rapport avec la magnetised, lui posa
mentalement une autre question, Reviendrez-vous la semaine prochaine 1 l
' Peut-etre,' fut la reponse du sujet ; mais invite" a communiquer aux
personnes pr^sentes la question mentale, elle repondit, ' Vous m'avez
demande si vous reviendrez la semaine prochaine.' Oette confusion, portant
sur un mot de la phrase, est tres significative. On dirait que la jeune fille
a ' bronchi ' en lisant dans le cerveau du magndtiseur.

" 3. Le Dr. Lie'beault, afin qu'aucune phrase indicative ne fut
prononce'e, meme a voix basse, dcrivit sur un billet, ' Mademoiselle, en se
reveillant, verra son chapeau noir transforme en chapeau rouge.' Le billet
fut passe d'avance a tous les temoins, puis MM. Lie'beault et de Guaita
poserent, en silence, leur main sur le front du sujet, en formulant mentale-
ment la phrase convenue. Alors la jeune fille, instruite qu'elle verrait dans
la piece quelque chose d'insolite, fut revei]le"e. Sans une hesitation
elle fixa aussitdt son chapeau, et, avec un grand eclat de rire, se re*cria,
' Ce n'e"tait pas son chapeau ; elle n'en voulait pas. II avait bien la
meme forme ; mais cette plaisanterie avait assez durd ; il fallait lui rendre
son bien.' ' Mais enfin, qu'y voyez-vous de chang^ ? ' ' Yous savez de
reste. Vous avez des yeux comme moi.' ' Mais encore ? ' On dut insister
tres longtemps pour qu'elle consentit a dire en quoi son chapeau e"tait
change ; on voulait se moquer d'elle. Pressed de questions elle dit enfin,
' Vous voyez bien qu'il est tout rouge.' Comme elle refusait de la reprendre,
force fut de mettre fin a son hallucination, en lui affirmant qu'il allait
revenir a sa couleur premiere. Le docteur souffla sur le chapeau, et,
redevenu le sien a ses yeux, elle consentit a le reprendre.2

" Tels sont les re"sultats que nous certifions avoir obtenus de concert.
En foi de quoi, nous avons re'dige le present proces-verbal.

"Nancy, ce 9 Janvier, 1886, fait en double.

"A. A. LIEBEAULT.
"STANISLAS DE GUAITA."

"Nous avons dtd, une fois, tres heureux avec une jeune fille de 15 ans,
Mile. Camille Simon, et cela en presence de M. Brullard et de quelques
autres personnes.3 Je lui ai sugger^ mentalement qu'a son reVeil elle
verrait son chapeau, qui est brun, transform^ en chapeau jaune ; puis je

1 The questions were not committed to paper till after the conclusion of the sitting,
which is unfortunate, as everything depends on their exact wording.

2 Et la somnambule, imme'diatement apres, ne se souvient plus de son hallucination.

3 Moi seul ai touch^ la somnambule. — A. A. L.

VOL. II. 2 U 2

660 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

1'ai mise en rapport avec tout le monde, et j'ai fait circuler, sous les yeux
de chacun, un billet indiquant ma suggestion, avec recommandation de
penser comme moi. Mais, par une distraction dont je suis coutumier, je
n'ai plus songe a la fin a la couleur que j'avais de'signe'e ante"rieurement par
e"crit ; j'ai eu Fide'e bien arrete'e qu'elle verrait son chapeau teint en rouge.
Et, en la reveillant, je lui ai affirm^ qu'elle verrait quelque chose
repre"sentant notre pens^e commune. Cette jeune fille, e'veille'e, n'a plus
reconnu la couleur de son chapeau. ' II e"tait brun,' a-t-elle dit. Apres
1'avoir longtemps consider^, elle a assure que re'ellement il n'avait plus le
meme aspect, qu'elle n'en pouvait pas trop en dinner la couleur, rnais que
toutef ois il lui paraissait d'un jaune-rougedtre. Alors je me suis souvenu
de ma distraction. Au cas present les temoins avaient pense*jawie et moi
rouge ; par suite, 1'objet a paru jaune et rouge & la somnambule re'veille'e ;
ce qui est la preuve qu'une suggestion mentale peut etre 1'dcho de plusieurs
cerveaux pensants." l

The following experiment, made with the same " subject," and sent
to us by Dr. Liebeault on June 3, 1886, is an interesting example of
temporary latency of the telepathic impression.

"J'avais, a cette jeune fille, fait suggerer par plusieurs personnes, et
mentalement, qu'apres la sortie de son sommeil elle verrait un coq noir
se promenant sur le plancher de 1'appartement. Au reveil et long-
temps apres (a peu pres une demie heure) elle ne voit absolument rien,
quoique je lui eusse annonce qu'elle devait apercevoir quelque chose. C'est
alors (au bout d'une demie heure) que cette jeune fille etant alle au jardin,
et ayant considere ma petite basse cour, par hasard, elle revint tout
courant nous dire : ' Ah ! je sais ce que je devais voir ; c'est un coq noir.
Cette idee m'est venue en regardant votre coq.' Mon coq est moitie d'un
noir verdatre sur les ailes, la queue, et le ventre, et partout ailleurs il est
d'un blanc jaunatre. Ainsi voil& une association d'une ide"e se transmettant
de la vue d'un etre reel, a une ide*e fictive transmise suggestivement et
mentalement par les personnes presentes."

The following record of experiments was kindly sent to us, on
April 27, 1886, by Dr. Jules Ochorowicz, ex-Professor Agrege of the
University of Lemberg, now residing at 24, Boulevard St. Germain,
Paris. It is to be wished that the original notes had included a very
much more detailed description of the conditions ; 2 but as corrobora-
tive of the parallel but more striking results recorded in Vol. I.,
Chap. II., the present set deserves attention.

1 The reader may recall Prof. Lodge's experiment as to the combination of tele-
pathically transferred impressions from two different agents (Vol. i., p. 50 ; see also
p. 80). Mr. Myers and I were witnesses of a similar confluence of suggestions verbally
given at Dr. Liebeault's house, on Aug. 31, 1885. Mr. Myers hypnotised a "subject,"
and told her that on awaking she would see a baby on his knees. I told her that she
would see a cat there. When she awoke she gazed at a hat which was on Mr. Myers'
knee, and exclaimed, "C'est ni chat ni enfant!" and the mixed hallucination inspired
a terror and disgust which lasted for three or four minutes.

2 Possibly Dr. Ochorowicz will to some extent repair this omission in his forthcoming
book, Le Probleme de la Suggestion Mentale, in which this record will be embodied.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 661

The first experiments, with cards, were of the type described in
Vol. I., pp. 31-3; but though the success obtained told slightly in favour
of a cause other than chance, the series was too short to have any
independent value. The complete record of the next set of trials is as
follows. The percipient was throughout in a normal waking state.
(Complete successes are marked *, partial successes *f*, first guesses
only being counted.)

Madame D., age"e 70 ans, forte, robuste, tres intelligente. Rheumatisme
articulaire chronique. Experience hypnotique ; lourdeur, paralysie,
analgesic, dans le doigt. Deux personnes imaginent un objet, Madame
D. le devine. Elle ne peut pas nous voir.

PREMIERE SERIE, LE 2 AVRIL, 1885.
(a) UNE CARTE DE JEU.

OBJET PENSE. OBJET DEVINE.

1. Six de pique ............ "Sixnoir."f

2. Dix de pique ............ " Rouge ; un roi ; un dix."

3. Valet de coeur ............ " Rouge ;f un roi ; une danie ?"

(b) UNE COULEUR.

4. Bleue ............... " Bleue."*

5. Jaune ............... "Jaune."*

6. Noire ............... "Noire."*

(c) UN OBJET QUELCONQUE.

7. Une lampe " Un livre ; un cigare ; un papier."

8. Un chapeau de soie, noir ... " Quelque chose de bleu ; chaise."

9. Un fauteuil ............ " Une. sucriere.; une armoire ; un

<^,oT,hs°J meuble."

10. Le sel ~ ............... " Un gout de sel."*

(d) UNE LETTRE.

11. z .................. "i, r, s."

UNE PERSONNE CONNUE.

12. Valentine ............... "Valentine."*

13. Mr 0 ................ " Mr- D. ? Mr Z. ?"

UN PORTRAIT DE LA
14. D'un ^veque ............ " C'est 1'eVeque." *

UN CHIPPRE.

isc «7^9R"

10. o .................. /, O, J, o.

1 It ought to be made a rule that the object chosen ia not anything visible in the
room ; as it is impossible to prove that it was not indicated to the guesser by the attitude
or glance of some one present. It ought to have been stated in many cases whether the
object or colour was looked at, or merely imagined, by the agents.

662 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

UNE IMPRESSION.
OBJET PENSE. . OBJET DEVINE.

16. Gaie " Triste."

UNE FIGURE QUELCONQUE.

17. Une croix noire " Un arbre — branches croise"es."

18. Un vieillard a longue bar be ... "Un homme, barbu ; bar be

blanche."*

UNE PHOTOGRAPHIE SUR SEPT.

19. D'un gargon " Une jeune fille ; des enfants."

UN NOM QUELCONQUE.

20. Marie "Marie."*

21. Adam "Jean, Gustave, Charles."

UN NOMBRE QUELCONQUE.

22. Dix " Six, douze, neuf, dix."

UN OBJET QUELCONQUE.

23. Un livre bleu, satin " Couleur violette — rose."

24. Un crayon d'or pos^ sur un

fond bleu "Quelquechosedenoirsurdubleu."f

25. As de pique sur un fond noir ... " Quelque chose de noir — bleu ; une

carte ; 1'as de trefle."

UN INSTRUMENT.

26. Un clairon "Unviolon."

UN CHIFPRE.

27. 3 "2, 5."

UN OBJET DE LA SALLE.

28. Une assiette avec un image ... " L'assiette avec 1'image."*

UN GOUT.

29. Du sel " Aigre — amer."

30. Sucre "Doux."f

31. Des f raises " D'une pomme — du raisin; des

f raises."

DEUXIEME SERIE, LE 2 MAI, 1885.

UN OBJET QUELCONQUE.

32. Un buste de M. N. " Un portrait — d'un homme ;f un

buste."

33. Un eVentail " Quelque chose de rond."

34. Une clef " Quelque chose en plomb — en

bronze — en fer."

35. Une main portant une bague... "Quelque chose qui brille — un

diamant — une bague."

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 663

UN Gotfx.

OBJET PENSE. OBJET DEVINE.

36. Acide "Doux."

UNE FORME.

37. Un carre* " Quelque chose d' irregulier."

38. Un cercle " Un triangle — un cercle."

UNE LETTRE.

39. M "M."*

40. D "D."*

41. J "J."*

42. B "A, X, R, B."

43. O " W, A— non, c'est un O."

44. Jan "J" (Continuez), "Jan."*

TROISIEME SERIE, LE 6 MAI, 1885.

Le sujet, nous tournant le dos, tient un crayon et ecrit ce qui lui
vient dans la pense'e. Nous lui touchons le dos Idgerement d'un doigt,
en regardant les lettres e"crites par nous. Vingt-deux experiences l ont
6t6 faites sans e"tre note'es exactement ; c'e"taient pour la plupart des
tehees. Suit une seYie de succes e'tonnants.

66. Brabant "Bra — " (je m'efforce mentalement

a aider le sujet, sans rien dire)
"bant."*

67. Paris "P . . . . aris."*

68. Telephone "T . . . Telephone."*

QUATRIEME SERIE, LE 8 MAI, 1885. (MEMES CONDITIONS.)
UNE LETTRE.

69. Z "L, P, K,T."

70. B "B."*

71. F "S, T. F."

72. n "M, N."

73. P "P, Z, A."

74. Y "V, Y."

75. e "e."*

76. Gustave " F, T, Gabriel."

77. Duch "C, O."

78. ba "B, A."f

79.. N 0 "F, K, O."

UN NOMBRE.

80. 44 "6, 8, 12."

81. 2 "7, 5, 9."

(J'engage mon aide a se repre'senter la forme dcrite et non les sons
des nombres.)

82. 3 "8, 3."

83. 7 "7."*

84.8 " 8— non, 0, 6, 9."f

1 Dr. Ochorowicz speaks of 22 experiments between 44 and 66, but only allows
for 21.

664

CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

Suivent 13 experiences sur les formes dessine'es, phantastiques, parnii
lesquelles cinq seulement pre'seiitaient une certaine analogic.

UNE PERSONNE CONNUE.

OBJET PENSE. OBJET DEVINE.

98. Le sujet lui-me'me " M. O. — non, c'est moi."

99. M. D.

« M. D."*

UN IMAGE QUELCONQUE.

100. Nous nous repre'sentons la lune " Je vois les nuages, qui filent. Une
croissant — Me P. (mon aide) lumiere. C'est la lune."*
sur un fond de nuages, moi
dans un ciel bleu fonce.

The following is a tabular view of the results of this series : —

1
1

Complete
Successes.

a, §

Failures

I. Visual — Diagrams, with contact

13

0

0

13

II. Imagined objects, various, with contact

3

2

0

1

without contact

27

8

4

15

III. Imagined numbers, letters, and "names,

without contact

12

5

o

7

IV. Visual numbers and names and letters,

with contact

41

6

2

33

V. Abstract ideas

1

1

VI. Tastes

4

o

1

3

101

21

7

73

It will be seen that the majority both of complete and partial
successes occur in the first 44 trials, in which there was no contact.

A third set of trials, made with a hypnotised " subject," gave 8
complete and 7 partial successes, and 11 failures. But here, though
contact was avoided, the form of experiment — involving movement of
the limbs, and sometimes actual movement about the room, — is open
to grave objection ; as it can never be proved to the satisfaction of
persons not present that guidance of some sort was not afforded by
unconscious physical signs.

The following case of the transference of a name is recorded by
M. Ch. Richet. It is one of the sporadic instances which occurred
before the time was ripe for placing telepathy on a firm evidential
basis. In future, we may hope that similar casual instances will, as a
matter of course, be recorded at the moment, (especially by medical

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 665

and scientific observers,) and forwarded to our London headquarters,
or to those of the Societd de Psychologic Physiologique in Paris.

" Octobre 30, 1885.

" Je n'ai obtenu qu'une seule fois dans de nombreuses recherches sur
la lucidite des personnes mesmerise'es, un r^sultat satisfaisant. C'est pre"-
cise'ment dans une de mes premieres experiences, et elle est remarquable,
car je ne 1'ai jamais pu re'pe'ter, meme avec une approximation moindre.
Une jeune fille, convalescente, fut mise dans le sommeil magne"tique, en
Novembre, 1872, par moi, a 1'Hotel-Dieu. Un jour, vers 4 heure de 1'apres-
midi, j'amenai avec moi un jeune e*tudiant AmeYicain de mes amis, M.
Hearn. M. Hearn n'avait jamais vu cette jeune fille. Lorsque elle fut
endormie, je dis a mon sujet magne'tique: ' Connaissez-vous le nom de mon
ami?' (J'^tais sur de ne pas avoir prononce son nom.) Elle se mit 4
sourire. 'Non,' me dit-elle. Puis, comme j'insistais, elle ajouta : ' Je ne
le vois pas.' J'insiste encore, et elle me dit : ' II y a cinq lettres.' ' Eh
bien ! ' dis-je alors, ' quelle est la premiere lettre ? ' Alors elle, a voix
tres basse, me dit, 'H.' ' Quelle est la seconde lettre ? ' dis-je. 'E.' ' Et
la troisieme? ' ' Je ne la vois pas.' Comme elle cherchait inutilement, je
dis, ' Passons a la quatrieme.' ' R.' ' Puis la cinquieme.' ' N.'

" J'ai essaye* le lendemain d'autres experiences analogues avec le meme
sujet, mais sans succes. De meme plus tard, sans succes, avec d'autres
personnes.

" C'est pour cela que je ne 1'avais pas publie'e ; mais maintenant que le
fait de cette thought-transference semble bien prouve*, je me crois autorisd
;i le donner; car il rentre dans un ensemble de faits qui paraissent
demon tr^s, et j'en ai et^ tellement frappe" que je me souviens avec une
precision absolue de toutes les circonstances qui 1'ont accompagne."

The next case is from Dr. A. M. Chiltoff, of Kharkoff, and is
parallel to those described in Vol. I., pp. 82-3.

" University of Kharkoff.

" May, 1886.

"On Jan. 31, 1886, in Petersburg, in the lodging of M. Greshner, I,
in 3 minutes, and at a distance of 4 feet, plunged into sleep M.
Drobiazguin, an officer of the Russian navy. The experiment was made in
the presence of M. Toumas, M.D. (now Professor at the University of
Warsaw), and of many other witnesses. When the ' subject ' fell asleep,
one. of the witnesses wrote on a sheet of paper the (Russian) word ' Bog '
(God). Then I took this sheet of paper and put it on the forehead of my
' subject.' To my question whether he can read the word written on the
paper, M. Drobiazguin gave an affirmative answer, and then proceeded to
pronounce in a dead voice the letters. The first two were read correctly,
but in lieu of ' g ' he said ' tch.' When I remarked to him that the last
letter is guessed incorrectly, he immediately said the true letter. In my.
opinion this experiment cannot be explained by ' mental suggestion,' for
those present expected that the ' subject ' would pronounce the right letter,
' g,' and he nevertheless pronounced ' tch.' "

[There is no Russian word " botch." As regards peculiarities of
spelling, see Vol. I., pp. 76-8. The independent action of the percipient's

666 CASES TOO LATE FOE INSERTION

mind which such peculiarities indicate affords, according to the reasoning
in this book, no ground at all for doubting that the idea was telepathi-
cally transferred from one mind to the other.]

We owe the following accounts of some experiments in hypnotic
rapport to Mr. C. Kegan Paul, who states that he has known the
phenomenon of " community of taste in the mesmeric sleep " to have
occurred several times in the case of this " subject." Mr. Paul writes: —

"May 27th, 1884.

"I lived at Great Tew, in Oxfordshire, from March, 1851, to May,
1852. When there, the following circumstance occurred, but I am not
able to fix the month, further than to say that I think it was in the late
summer of 1851. (No. I am now convinced that it was in April, 1852.)

" I had been in the habit of mesmerising frequently Mr. Walter Francis
Short, then an undergraduate scholar of New College, who was, without
any single exception, the most ' sensitive ' person of either sex I have ever
known. He usually became what is called clairvoyant, but this always
tired him, and I seldom made protracted experiments in this direction.
On several occasions I found that a community of taste was established
between us, but only once made any experiment with more than one
substance, such as a biscuit, or glass of water.

" At Great Tew, with his consent, my two sisters alone being present
besides ourselves, I carried the matter further. We had dined in my only
sitting-room, and the dessert was still on the table. (I think I am right,
though my sister F. doubts.) I put Short to sleep in an arm-chair, which I
turned with its back to the table, and Short's face to the wall. There
was no mirror in the room. I asked Short, taking his hand, if he thought
he could taste what I took in my mouth, and he said he thought that he
could. I, still holding his hand, shut my own eyes, and my sisters put
into my mouth various things which were on the table. I remember only
raisins, but there were four or five various substances tasted. These were
all quite correctly described, except that I think there was an uncertainty
about the kind of wine. Short, however, had of course been aware of what
was on the table, but he could not know, nor did I know, the order in
which I was to be fed with these things.

" To carry the experiment further, one of my sisters left the room,
bringing back various things wholly unknown to me, which she ad-
ministered to me having my eyes shut. I remember spices, black pepper,
salt, raw rice, and finally soap, all of which Short recognised, and the last
of which he rejected with a splutter of great disgust. The experiment
only ended when we could think of nothing more to taste.

" I had at that time already left Oxford ; Short did so soon after, and
our various occupations seldom allowed our meeting. His conviction of
my power over him was such that he begged that I would never attempt
to place him under mesmeric influence when I was at a distance from him,
on the ground that, as he was rowing in the Oxford boat, I might do so
when he was on the river. I had once affected him at a distance, under
rather singular circumstances, and of course willingly gave the promise.

"C. KEGAN PAUL.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 667

" My sister F. is right in remarking that our four selves were the
only persons in the house. My only servant was a woman in the village,
who lived close by, and came and went at fixed hours, like an Oxford
scout."

This account was sent by Mr. Paul to his sister, Miss Paul, with the
following letter : —

" In talking with my friend Henry Sidgwick over my experiments in
mesmerism many years ago, I mentioned one with Short at Tew, when you
and M. were present. He has asked me to write it down, and get if
possible your recollections on it.

" The particular experiment was one in which Short, being in the
mesmeric sleep, was able to taste what was put into my mouth. If you
recollect the circumstance at all, I want you, before reading what I have
said, enclosed in another envelope, to write down a statement of what you
remember as much in detail as possible — time, place, persons present,
things tasted, &c. ; then to read my narrative, and to write also how far
your recollection, thus refreshed, tallies with mine, and preserve both
accounts, even if you find them contradictory ; then to send my account
and your account and remarks enclosed to M., together with this note,
asking her to follow exactly the same plan, and return my statement,
yours, and her own to me, together with this note.

" I should like you also to say that you have observed my order of
proceeding as indicated above. « c. KEGAN PAUL."

Miss Paul replied as follows, on May 27 : —

" On Thursday, April 29th, 1852, my sister and I went to stay with
my brother at Great Tew, in Oxfordshire, and Mr. Short joined us at
Oxford, and went with us to Tew. As he returned to Oxford on Saturday,
May 1st, the mesmeric experiments, which I well remember, must have
been on Friday, April 30th, and they were after dinner in the evening.
My brother mesmerised Mr. Short, and when he was quite asleep he tried
some experiments.

" My brother drank some wine (I think it was port), and we saw Mr.
Short's lips and throat moving as if he was swallowing it, and on my
brother asking him what he was drinking, he at once said what it was.
The wine had been taken from a cupboard and poured out, where, even
had he been awake, Mr. Short could not have seen what it was before
tasting it."

" [I think my own account is the more correct. — C. K. P.] "

" My sister then got some black pepper from the kitchen and put it in
my brother's hand, and on his putting some in his own mouth, Mr. Short
at once tasted it, and on my brother asking him what he had in his mouth,
he said it was very hot and unpleasant, but was not quite sure what it
was. My brother held Mr. Short's hand all the time.

" The only other thing I remember is that on my brother removing his
hand after, and substituting my sister's, Mr. Short looked as if in pain, and
said the change was unpleasant.

" No one else was in the little cottage at the time.

"F. K. PAUL.

668 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

" P.S. — Since writing my account I have read my brother's, and think
it very accurate, as, now I am reminded of the soap, &c., I can faintly
recollect it, but not clearly, as I do the things I have written down.

" Also I think the dessert had been put away, and the wine taken out
again on purpose.

" I remember the date, as I have always written down very shortly the
events of each day."

Mr. Paul's other sister, Mrs. P., writes, on May 29, 1884 : —

"In the year 1852 or 1853, I believe at Bloxham [certainly Tew. —
C. K. P.], I remember my brother trying experiments on a friend, Mr.
Short, whom he was in the habit of mesmerising. One evening, I saw him
mesmerise Mr. Short, and while he was in that state my brother asked for
a glass of water or wine, and drank it. Mr. Short appeared as if he was
drinking, and swallowed, and made a reply when asked what it was ; but
the experiment I remember best was, after my getting some pepper, and
giving it to my brother, he put some into his mouth, and Mr. Short
looked as if in pain, and said, ' Hot.' Then I took his hand, and his face
changed, and I think he said, ' Nasty.' I know he seemed to dislike the
change from my brother's touch ; but although I know there were other
experiments, it is so long ago that I cannot quite recall them.

«M. E. P.

" P.S. — Since writing the above I have read my brother's narrative,
which is, I think, substantially correct."

The Rev. W. P. Short writes to Mr. Podmore :—

" The Rectory, Donhead St. Mary, Salisbury.

"June 12th, 1884.

" DEAR SIR, — Stock tells me you would like my account of some
mesmeric experiences of mine at Great Tew in the year '52. You are very
welcome, but 32 years may have impaired my memory for the details, and
I should like Kegan Paul to see the account before any use is made of it.

" I had come up to New College by accident a week before the time,
and finding college empty accepted an invitation to pay Paul, then curate
of Great Tew, a visit. One night, I think the Thursday following, he
mesmerised me, and made, I believe, some successful experiments in the
' transference of taste ' ; but of these, as I was in a deep sleep, I can say
nothing. When I was in due time awakened, he said, ' We tried to get
you to visit New College, but you said it was all a guess, and would tell us
nothing.' I answered, ' I seem to have dreamt of New College Junior
Common-room, and to have seen B. and G. sitting at a small round table
drawn near the fire, with the lamp on the large table near them, playing
at cards.' It was agreed that I should test the truth of this on my return
to Oxford on Friday (one day before men in general came up). On entering
college I met B., and said, 'You up? Are there any other men come?'
' Oh, yes ; half-a-dozen. G. and so-and-so,' &c. 'Were you in the Common-
room last night at 10 (?) ? ' 'Yes.' 'Who else was there?' 'Oh, the
whole lot of us. No, by 10 everyone was gone but I and G.' 'Where
were you sitting ?' 'At a small table close to the fire, it was so cold.'

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 669

' With the lamp on the big table near you ? ' ' Yes, drawn close to us.'
' Then I will tell you what you were doing. You were playing cards.' 'How
odd ! We weren't playing cards, but G. was showing me tricks on the
cards.'

" I have always thought this a thoroughly good case, too exact to be a
mere coincidence, and I think tolerably accurate even in the words used,
but those who do not, like myself, believe in clairvoyance l will probably
set it down to a happy guess.

" I have not for many years had any experience of mesmerism, but
after this, for some years, I saw a great deal of it, and have no more doubt
of its reality, even in its higher phases of inducing clairvoyance, &c., than
I have of my own existence.

" I doubt whether B. would remember this (I don't think G. ever heard
of it), but I would write to him if you like it, only I am rather overworked
just now. — Believe me, yours very truly,

"W. F. SHORT."

Mr. Short writes, on Feb. 18, 1886 :—

" My friend B. remembered nothing of the circumstances (naturally
enough), though I feel perfectly sure it took place."

Mr. C. Kegan Paul writes, on June 16, 1884 : —

" I am sorry to say I do not remember much about the clairvoyance
part of the experiment with Walter Short, though 1 remember the com-
munity of taste vividly, and have described it to Mr. Sidgwick.

" Short became clairvoyant on several occasions under my mesmerism,
but I do not recall the details with certainty. On the evening in question
I only remember that on trying some experiments Short said he was tired,
and wished to be wakened. I do not remember his mentioning his ' dream '
or that I heard afterwards how nearly correct it had been. It is probable
that he did mention the dream, but that I paid little attention to it, being
full of the first experiment, and that as I only saw him occasionally, and
we did not exchange letters, I never heard the verification."

In the following cases, though they are in a sense experimental, the
experiment was not directed to the particular result obtained. They
are parallel to those recorded in Vol. I., pp. 78 and 84 ; they illustrate
thought-transference of the " underground " sort, both agent and
percipient being unconscious of the idea which nevertheless is pretty
clearly shown to have passed from one mind to the other otherwise
than through the recognised sensory channels. We have reason to
think that this form of transference is not extremely uncommon ; and
these specimens may serve to elicit further records.

Mrs. Wingfield (mother of the ladies mentioned above, p. 653)
writes as follows : —

1 This may very probably have been a case of telepathic clairvoyance (Vol. i., pp. 368-9),
conditioned by the hypnotic trance, but also by the pre-existing relation between Mr.
Short and the friends whom he saw (p. 162).

670 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

"34, Ennismore Gardens, S.W.

"April 2nd, 1886.

"On the evening of Jan. 13, 1886, Mr. Tatham [of 2, Cambridge
Gate, W.] was writing automatically, but not very legibly. He wrote a
word twice, which some of us tried to read, but could not. He said he
thought it was Phoebe, or something like it. Some minutes afterwards Miss
Wingfield, who was sitting at the other side of the room, wrote automati-
cally, ' Who is G. Norby ? ' We none of us knew this name, and asked
why the question was written. We were told ' because he wanted to
tell something about an accident,' or words to that effect. The subject
then dropped, and the writing was at an end.

" Some half -hour or more afterwards, Mr. M. W. took up Mr. Tatham's
paper and looked at it, and said, ' Why ! this is G. Norby.' And when
we examined the letters carefully we found it was so. Therefore Mr.
Tatham and Miss W. were both influenced to write the same name
independently of each other,1 as at the time Miss W. wrote, ' Who is G.
Norby ? ' she had not seen what Mr. Tatham wrote, and we none of us
had any idea of such a name. There were six persons present beside Mr.
T. and Miss W., none of whom had ever heard the name.

" E. A. WINGFIELD,
"PERCY TATHAM."

The next record is from Miss Birrell and Mrs. Medley, near
relatives of the present writer, who entertains little doubt that the
facts, though somewhat remote, are recorded with substantial

accuracy.

"37, Addison Gardens, North Kensington, W.

"October, 1885.

"I was playing at table-turning in the Christmas holidays of 1863,
with a party of six or seven. At last the table rapped a name we none
of us knew. We thought there was a mistake. A lady in the room, but
not at the table, turned round and identified it as the name of some rela-
tion— I think her sister's son. We asked the table to rap three times if
it wished her to come, which it did. She came and put her hands on the
table but no distinct message followed. The name was new to me. I
said, ' Was there really such a person ? ' The lady, who was a good deal
distressed, answered, ' Oh yes ! ' and mentioned one or two facts about
him, turning round to another lady of her own age, in the room but not at
the table, for further confirmation. She did this as we were too young to
remember the dead person.

u OLIVE BIRRELL."

" Walden House, All Saints Street, Nottingham.

"October 30th, 1886.

" I was seated with a party of six or eight round a table with our
hands placed upon it, and it rapped in reply to the letters of the alphabet.
Several names were spelt out and various broken sentences. The table
at length spelt the name ' William Smallshaw.' We replied, ' There

1 If this were certainly the case, the incident could nob have been included in the
present work. But it is quite conceivable that Miss Wingfield's production of the name
was due to its latent existence in Mr. Tatham's mind.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 671

never was such a person,' and one gentleman laughed and said, 'You have
made a mistake, try again.' The table continued to rap and then a lady in
another part of the room, away from our party altogether, said very
nervously, ' / had a brother, William Smallshaw.' The table continued to
rap and we asked if Miss Smallshaw should join us. It replied, ' Yes,' and
she came. No sentence of any value or sense was made out after this.

"EMILY G. MEDLEY."

Miss Birrell is tolerably confident that the surname was not Smallshaw,
but Lyon, which was Miss Smallshaw's married sister's name.

Mr. Augustine Birrell, who was present, says that the expression of
Miss Smallshaw's face, as she came across the room, is fixed in his
memory ; but he cannot recall what followed, when she put her hands on
the table, or the reason of her being summoned to the table.

[The state of Miss Smallshaw's health has prevented us from applying
for her recollections.]

§ 2. The following is a transitional case, akin to those recorded
in Vol. I,, pp. 103-9 ; but it differs from that group in the fact that
the agent remembers his own direct share in the occurrence, and
appears to have been reciprocally affected. We owe the case to Mr.
H. P. Sparks (of Overbeck Villa, Woodstone, near Southampton,) and
Mr. A. H. W. Cleave (of 28, Vardens Road, New Wandsworth, S.W.,)
who at the time were fellow-students of naval engineering at Ports-
mouth. Personal acquaintance has completely confirmed the
impression made on me by the letters of these gentlemen, that
they had observed the phenomena, which were a complete surprise to
them, with intelligence and care. They were unaware of the
remarkable interest of their results ; and Mr. Sparks addressed me
in the first instance, not so much to supply information which, for
aught he knew, might be of a common enough type, as to ask for
advice about hypnotic experimentation in general. He did not know
to what address to write ; but acting on a dim recollection of a
newspaper notice of our objects, he boldly launched a letter into
space, which by good luck reached me after a certain amount of
peregrination. His account, received in January, 1886, is as follows : —

" H.M.S. ' Maryborough', Portsmouth.

(685) " For the last year, or for about the last 15 months, I have been
in the habit of mesmerising a fellow-student of mine. The way I did it
was by simply looking into his eyes as he lay in an easy position on a bed.
This produced sleep. After a few times I found that this sleep was
deepened by making long passes after the patient was off. 1 Then comes

:the trance Mr. Cleave was to
ing, he had no memory of any

672 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

the remarkable part of this sort of mesmerism. [Mr. Sparks then
describes his ' subject's ' ability to see, in the trance, places in which he
was interested, if he resolved to see them before he was hypnotised ; but
there is nothing to show that these visions were anything but purely
subjective.] However, it has been during the last week or so I have been
so surprised and startled by an extraordinary affair. Last Friday
evening (January 15th, 1886) he expressed his wish to see a young lady
living in Wandsworth, and he also said he would try to make himself
seen by her. I accordingly mesmerised him, and continued the long
passes for about 20 minutes, concentrating my will on his idea. When he
came round (I brought him round by just touching his hand and willing
him, after 1 hour and 20 minutes' trance) he said he had seen her in the
dining-room, and that after a time she grew restless, and then suddenly
looked straight at him and then covered her eyes with her hands. Just
after this he came round. Last Monday evening (January 18th, 1886) we
did the same thing, and this time he said he thought he had frightened
her, as after she had looked at him for a few minutes she fell back in her
chair in a sort of faint. Her little brother was in the room at the time. Of
course, after this we expected a letter if the vision was real; and on Wed-
nesday morning he received a letter from this young lady asking whether
anything had happened to him, as on Friday evening she was startled by
seeing him standing at the door of the room. After a minute he disappeared,
and she thought that it might have been fancy; but on the Monday evening
she was still more startled by seeing him again, and this time much
clearer, and it so frightened her that she nearly fainted.

" This account I send you is perfectly true, I will vouch, for I have two
independent witnesses who were in the dormitory at the time when he
was mesmerised, and when he came round. My patient's name is Arthur
H. W. Cleave, and his age is 18 years. My own is 19 years. A. 0.
Darley and A. S. Thurgood, fellow-students, are the two witnesses I
mentioned. « H. PERCY SPARKS."

Mr. Cleave writes, on March 15, 1886 : —

"H.M.S. ' Marlborough,' Portsmouth.

"Sparks and myself have, for the past 18 months, been in the habit
of holding mesmeric seances in our dormitories. For the first month or
two we got no very satisfactory results, but after that we succeeded in
sending one another to sleep. I could never get Sparks further than the
sleeping state, but he could make me do anything he liked whilst I was
under the influence ; so I gave up trying to send him off, and all our
efforts were made towards my being mesmerised. After a short time we
got on so well that Sparks had three or four other fellows in the dormitory
to witness what I did. I was quite insensible to all pain, as the fellows
have repeatedly pinched my hands and legs without my feeling it. About
6 months ago I tried my power of will in order, while under the influence,
to see persons to whom I was strongly attached. For some time I was
entirely unsuccessful, although I once thought that I saw my brother (who
is in Australia), but had no opportunity of verifying the vision.

" A short time ago, I tried to see a young lady whom I know very
well, and was perfectly surprised at my success. I could see her as

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 673

plainly as I can see now, but I could not make myself seen by her,
although I had often tried to. After I had done this several times, I
determined to try and make myself seen by her, and told Sparks of my
idea, which he approved. Well, we tried this for five nights running
without any more success. We then suspended our endeavours for a
night or two, as I was rather over-exerted by the continued efforts and
got severe headaches. We then tried again (on, I think it was, a Friday,
but am not certain), and were, I thought, successful ; but as the young
lady did not write to me about it, I thought I must have been mistaken, so
I told Sparks that we had better give up trying. But he begged me to
try once more, which we did on the following Monday, when we were
successful to such an extent that I felt rather alarmed. (I must tell you
that I am in the habit of writing to the young lady every Sunday, but I did
not write that week, in order to make her think about me.) This took
place between 9.30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Monday night, and on the following
Wednesday morning I got the letter which I have enclosed. I, of course,
then knew I had been successful. I went home about a fortnight after
this, when I saw the young lady, who seemed very frightened in spite of
my explanations, and begged me never to try it again, and I promised her
that I would not.

" I must now tell you our method of mesmerism. I lay on my bed,
with my head raised on two pillows, and Sparks sat facing me about three
feet off on a chair. The lights were made low, and then I watched his
eyes intently, thinking in the meantime of the young lady whom I wanted
to see. After a short time (about 7 minutes) my sense of hearing left
me, and I could see nothing but two eyes, which after a short time
disappeared, and I then became senseless. (When we first experimented
I could never get farther than this state, and it was only after repeatedly
trying that I did so.) I then seemed to see (indistinctly at first) her face,
which gradually became plainer and plainer until I seemed to be in another
room altogether, and could detail minutely all the surroundings. I told
Sparks, when I came round, what I saw, who was with the young lady,
and what she was doing, all of which were verified in her letter.

"A. H. W. CLEAVE."

The two witnesses of the experiment last described write as follows : —

" I have seen Mr. Cleave's account of his mesmeric experiment, and
can fully vouch for the truth thereof.

" A. C. DABLEY."

" I have read Mr. Cleave's statement, and can vouch for the truth of
it, as I was present when he was mesmerised and heard his statement
after he revived.

"A. E. S. THURGOOD."

The following is a copy, made by the present writer, of the letter in
which the young lady, Miss A. , described her side of the affair.

The envelope bore the postmarks, "Wandsworth, Jan. 19, 1886,"
"Portsmouth, Jan. 20, 1886," and the address, "Mr. A. H.W. Cleave,
H.M.S. ' Maryborough,' Portsmouth."

VOL II. 2 X

674 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

" Wandsworth.

" Tuesday morning.

" DEAR ARTHUR, — Has anything happened to you ? Please write and
let me know at once, for I have been so frightened.

" Last Tuesday evening, I was sitting in the dining [room] reading,
when I happened to look up, and could have declared I saw you standing
at the door looking at me. I put my handkerchief to my eyes, and when
I looked again, you were gone. I thought it must have been only my
fancy, but last night (Monday), while I was at supper, I saw you again,
just as before, and was so frightened that I nearly fainted. Luckily only
my brother was there, or it would have attracted attention. Now do
write at once and tell me how you are. I really cannot write any
more now."

[Signature of Christian name.]

It will be seen that Miss mentions Tuesday as the day of

her first hallucination ; whereas both Mr. Sparks and Mr. Cleave
mention Friday as the day on which he first seemed to obtain a
vision of the room where she was ; and though, in a letter written on
March 21st, Mr. Cleave expresses uncertainty on this point, and
inclines to the view that his first vision of the room occurred on the
Tuesday, " as I waited for a day or two to see if I should get a letter
before I tried again " on the following Monday, it is impossible to set
aside the earlier statement. But in conversation, both he and Mr.
Sparks expressed their decided opinion — which accords with what
would be naturally inferred from their letters — that Tuesday must at
any rate have fallen within the five days running on which trials
were made, before the break ; and the first incident therefore gives
valuable confirmation to the second. Mr. Cleave's omission to write as

usual to Miss on the Sunday was perhaps an error of judgment ;

as it leaves it open to the objector to say that the non-receipt of a
letter on Monday morning so wrought on her mind as to conjure up a
spectral illusion, to which she had become predisposed by her experi-
ence of the previous week.

Mr. Cleave explains that though he might naturally enough have

imagined Miss to be in the dining-room at that hour, it

would have seemed to him more probable, had he made a guess
at the scene, that other elder members of the family should also
be present, than that she should have been alone with her little
brother — which is so far an argument for supposing his vision
to have been of the telepathically clairvoyant sort, and not a mere
subjective picture. But the nature of his percipience is, of course,

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 675

a separate question ; l the prime fact in the case is the hallucination

produced by his agency. Miss , it will be seen, was so seriously

disturbed by what occurred that she has requested him not to repeat
the experiment. Her feeling is natural enough — it is just one of the
natural conditions that " psychical research " has to reckon with.
Every department in the exploration of Nature has difficulties of its
own ; and it would be strange if a study that deals with living human
material were an exception. That the particular form of obstacle
here again encountered (see Vol I., p. 109) may make the accumula-
tion of evidence for the rarer psychical phenomena a slow process is
probable enough ; but that the prolongation of our search should have
already brought us a single fresh instance of this rarest type is really a
fact of the most hopeful significance, and one which would alone amply
vindicate the plan of wide and public inquiry that we have adopted.

The next account is perhaps even more remarkable, as the agent
was in a normal state. We owe it to Mrs. Russell, of Belgaum, India,
wife of Mr. H. R Russell, Educational Inspector in the Bombay

Presidency.

"June 8th, 1886.

(686) " As desired, I write down the following facts, as well as I can re-
call them. I was living in Scotland, my mother and sisters in Germany. I
lived with a very dear friend of mine, and went to Germany every year to
see my people. It had so happened that I could not go home as usual for
two years, when on a sudden I made up my mind to go and see my family.
They knew nothing of my intention ; I had never gone in early spring
before ; and I had no time to let them know by letter that I was going to
set off. I did not like to send a telegram, for fear of frightening my mother.
The thought came to me to will with all my might to appear to one of my
sisters, never mind which of them, in order to give them a warning of my
coming. I only thought most intensely for a few minutes of them, wish-
ing with all my might to be seen by one of them — half present myself, in
vision, at home.2 I did not take more than ten minutes, I think. I
started by Leith steamer on a Saturday night, end of April, 1859. I
wished to appear at home about 6 o'clock p.m. that same Saturday.
I arrived at home about 6 o'clock on the Tuesday morning following. I
entered the house without anyone seeing me, the hall being cleaned and
the front door open. I walked into the room. One of my sisters stood
with her back to the door ; she turned round when she heard the door
opening, and, on seeing me, stared at me, turning deadly pale and letting
what she had in her hand fall. I had been silent. Then I spoke, and said,
' It is I. Why do you look so frightened ? ' when she answered, ' I thought*
I saw you again as Stinchen ' (another sister) ' saw you on Saturday.'

1 If the case was truly reciprocal, it seems clearly to exemplify the connection of the
power to act telepathically with an abnormal extension of the agent's own susceptibility.
See pp. 161-2 and 309-10.

2 Note by Mr. Russell : — "I.e., she was at home, and saw her people, in thought."

VOL. II. 2x2

676 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

"When I inquired, she told me that on the Saturday evening, about
6 o'clock, my sister saw me quite clearly entering the room in which she
was by one door, passing through it, opening the door of another room
where my mother was, and shutting the door behind me. She rushed after
what she thought was I, calling out my name, and was quite stupefied when
she did not see me with my mother. My mother could not understand my
sister's excitement. They looked everywhere for me, but of course did not
find me. My mother was very miserable ; she thought I might be dying.

" My sister who had seen me (i.e., my apparition) was out that morning
when I arrived. I sat down on the stairs, to watch, when she came in, the
effect of my real appearance on her. When she looked up and saw me,
sitting motionless, she called out my name, and nearly fainted. My sister
has never seen anything unearthly either before that or afterwards ; and I
have never made any such experiments again — -nor will I, as the sister
that saw me first when I really came home had a very severe illness after-
wards, caused by the shock to her nerves. " J. M. RUSSELL."

Mrs. Russell wrote to ask her sister (Fraulein Hoist, of 7, Wohler's
Allee, Altona, Holstein) if she recollected the occurrence, and has copied
an extract from her sister's reply, of which the following is a translation : —

" Of course I remember the matter as well as if it had happened to-day.
Pray don't come appearing to me again ! " Fraulein Hoist declines,
however, to give an independent account, on the ground of dislike to
the subject.

I proceed to some more hypnotic cases. The following is an appa-
rently genuine, though isolated, case of the telepathic influence of
will on a hypnotic " subject," who however was at the time in a normal
state. (Cf. Vol. I., pp. 89-94.) The further experiment with the
same " subject " recalls the cases in Vol. I., p. 96, and above, pp.
334-6. We received the account in May, 1886, from Mr. E. M.

Clissold, of 3, Oxford Square, W.

" United University Club,

" Pall Mall East, S.W.

(687) " In the year 1878 (I believe), there was a carpenter (Gannaway)
employed by me to mend a gate in my kitchen garden, when a friend of
mine (Moens) called upon me, and the conversation turning on mesmerism,
he asked me if I knew anything about it myself. On my replying in the
affirmative, he said, ' Can you mesmerise anyone at a distance ? ' I said
that I had never tried to do so, but that there was a man now in the
garden upon whom I could easily operate, and that I would try the
experiment with this man, if he (Moens) would tell me what to do. He
then said, ' Form an impression of the man whom you intend mesmerising
in your mind, and then wish him strongly to come to you.' I very much
doubted the success of the enterprise, but I followed out the suggestion of
my friend, and I was extremely astonished to hear the steps of the man, whom
T wished to appear, running after me; he came right up to me and asked me
what I wanted with him. I must explain that my friend was walking
with me previously in the garden, and that we had seen and talked to the

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 677

man whom I subsequently mesmerised, but that when I wished him
to come to me I was out of his sight, behind the garden wall, some 100
yards distant, and that I had neither by conversation nor otherwise led him
to believe that I proposed to mesmerise him.

" My friend (Moens) is dead ; the man Gannaway I have not heard
of for more than seven years ; but I have this day written to him, and
asked him, if he remembers the incident alluded to, to write to me, and in
his own language describe the scene. I may tell you that I have not
supplied him with any of the above details, but have left him (if he can)
to tell his own story.

"E. M. CLISSOLD."

Mr. Gannaway writes back, in a letter which Mr. Clissold has
forwarded to us, that he remembers being often mesmerised by Mr.
Clissold, and he recalls some incidents of his experiences ; but he does not
recollect this particular occasion. One sentence of his letter is as
follows : — " I remember, in the dining-room, when you made me think the
same as you were thinking about, and I told you what you were thinking
of." Mr. Clissold explains that this was an occasion when the Hon.
Auberon Herbert was present, and he thus describes it : —

"June 1, 1886.

" Gannaway was mesmerised, and stood in one corner of my dining-
room. Herbert sat at the table, and wrote on a paper a subject on which
he wished me to think. Gannaway instantly told me, when I asked him,
what the thought was about. Herbert wrote : —

1. I see a house in flames.
' 2. I see a woman looking out of a window.
: 3. She has a child in her arms.
4. She throws it out of the window.
' 5. Is it hurt ?' &c., &c.
"Gannaway became much excited, as he appeared to witness these
scenes acted before him. I am conscious that if there had been
mala fides on my part, there was nothing in the experiment ; but it was
quite honestly conducted, and we were all of us very much surprised at
the wonderful accuracy with which Gannaway interpreted my thoughts."

I wrote to Mr. Auberon Herbert, asking him if he remembered
participating in an experiment in thought-transference, made with Mr.
Clissold's " subject," Gannaway, in which the ideas transferred related to
a conflagration. He replied : —

"Ashley Arnewood Farm, Lymington.

"June 2 2nd, 1886.

" My recollection is as follows ; some of the details have escaped me.
I thought of a house on fire. Gannaway (a carpenter, I think), on my
asking him what I saw, answered quite rightly. I then asked him again
what I saw, and he answered quite rightly, ' Fire-engine coming up.'
Then the conversation went on (I have shortened it). I. ' Ah ! some-
thing has happened ! what is it 1 ' G. ' A horse, belonging to the fire-
engine, has fallen down.' (Quite right.) My memory is quite distinct up
to this point as to the questions and answers, though I cannot exactly
remember the part Gannaway and Mr. Clissold took respectively. I

678 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

remember very distinctly I thought of and asked these questions, and I
believe it was Gannaway himself who answered them directly to me. The
next point was that, in answer to what I saw, he said they were throwing
feather-beds out of a top-storey window — this also was perfectly right —
but on this point my memory is not so clear as on the first three points.
I have as clear and positive a memory as a man could have about the
three first points, (1) fire, (2) fire-engine, (3) horse falling down. They
were all quite fairly asked, and quite fairly answered ; and I believe I
might add to them the fourth point, ' the feather bed,' but I cannot speak
positively on this. Then comes a curious point. I imagined an entirely
different scene — I cannot recall it, but it was to do with a wood — and his
power seemed to fail entirely. He made quite wrong answers. I have no
doubt about the truthfulness of the whole proceedings. One night I had
mesmerised him, and told him he was in a boat, and attacked by a shark.
If I had allowed it, he would have almost battered himself to pieces in
striking with both arms upon the floor, where he thought the shark was.1
He was an extraordinary man. It was enough, when you knew him, to
look in his eyes to have influence over him. Kindly tell Mr. Clissold I
most fully corroborate his statement as far as I know it.

"AuBERON HERBERT."

Another gentleman who was present on this occasion was Mr. A. T.
T. Peterson, of Arnewood Towers, Lymington, who believes that it was
he who drew up the programme of the experiment. His account is as
follows : —

"June 24th, 1886.

" I drew out a programme in writing of what I wished the operator
to think without speaking, in order to try the mere power of the operator
over the patient. On this occasion Herbert was the operator, Gannaway
the patient. Programme. — A fire-engine with two horses galloping on a
public road. One of the horses falls down ; gets up again, and on they go.
A house on a rising ground on the left on fire. A woman in her night-
dress, with a baby in her arms, imploring for help from the first floor.
People are throwing beds out of some of the windows of the rooms,
which are taken to opposite where the lady was. The child is thrown out
and caught all right. The woman jumps out, and is caught and saved.

" This paper I handed to Herbert, requesting him not to say a word,
which request he obeyed. He put Gannaway into trance, and Gannaway
acted the part [of spectator, presumably,] to the very letter.

" A. T. T. PETERSON."

[Mr. Peterson goes on to describe another equally successful experi-
ment where the picture transferred was a fishing-scene. Possibly this
preceded the failure which Mr. Herbert mentions.]

It is in connection with hypnotism that the most striking
telepathic results have been obtained, in the recent rapid develop-
ment of " psychical research " among French men of science. The

1 It is of course important to distinguish this phenomenon (which is of a very ordinary
type, and is merely of interest here as indicating the reality of the hypnotic state, ) from
the telepathic result before described.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 679

cases here given were reported to the Societe de Psychologic
Physiologique towards the close of last year, and were published
in the Revue Philosophique for February and for April, 1886.
The observations themselves, and the circumstances of their
publication, mark a distinct step in the scientific recognition of
telepathic phenomena on the Continent. The first report — Note sur
quelques Phdnomenes de Somnambulisme — is from Professor Pierre
Janet, of Havre, a Corresponding Member of the S.P.R.

(688) " Grace a 1'obligeance d'un medecin bien connu de la ville du
Havre, M. le docteur Gibert, j'ai pu pendant une quinzaine de jours
observer certains phdnomenes curieux de somnambulisme. . .

" Le sujet sur lequel ces experiences ont ete faites est une brave femme
de la campagne, que nous de"signerons sous le nom de Mme. B. Elle a
toujours eu, autant du moins que Ton peut le savoir, une tres bonne sante",
et en particulier elle ne presente a 1'etat normal aucun des signes de
I'hyste'rie. Elle est seulement sujette depuis son enfance a des acces de
somnambulisme naturel, pendant lesquels elle peut parler et d&rire les
singulieres hallucinations qu'elle parait ^prouver. Son caractere pendant
sa vie ordinaire est tres honnete, tres simple et surtout tres timide ;
quoique son intelligence paraisse fort juste, Mme. B. n'a regu aucune
instruction, elle ne sait pas ecrire et epelle a peine quelques lettres.
Plusieurs medecins ont deja, parait-il, voulu faire sur elle quelques experi-
ences, mais elle a toujours refuse leurs propositions. Ce n'est que sur la
demande de M. Gibert qu'elle a consenti a venir passer quelques jours au
Havre, du 24 septembre au 14 octobre 1885, et c'est pendant ce court
sejour que nous avons eu 1'occasion de 1'observer.

" II est assez facile de mettre Mme. B. en etat de somnambulisme arti-
ficiel ; il suffit pour cela de lui tenir la main en la serrant Idgerement pen-
dant quelques instants."

The usual symptoms of deep hypnotic trance presented themselves,
including complete insensibility to light, sound, and pain.

" Neanmoins il est un genre d'excitation auquel Mme. B. reste sensible
pendant ce sommeil. Celui qui 1'a endormie, et celui-la seul, a le pouvoir
de provoquer a volont^ une contracture partielle ou generale. II suffit,
par exemple, qu'il place un doigt dans 1'exteiision forcee pour qu'il reste
raide comme un morceau de bois, et une personne etrangere ne parvient
pas a le fl^chir. Si a ce moment le magnetiseur touche meme legerement
le doigt contracture, il s'assouplit instantanement. Pour provoquer la
contracture generale, il suffit que le magne'tiseur place sa main etendue a
une petite distance au-devant du corps."

Other persons could not produce these effects in the slightest degree.;
and in several other ways the person who had hypnotised the subject
retained, during her trance, a quite peculiar influence over her.

After about 10 minutes of deep sleep, Mme. B. would wake into a
somnambulic state, in which she was completely sensible to impressions,
and could answer questions.

680 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

" Mais le caractere, ainsi qu'on Fa frequemment remarque, n'est plus
du tout le merne qu'a Fe'tat de veille. Au lieu d'etre simple et timide,
Mme. B. est devenue subitement tres hardie, tres vive, pleine de caprices
et toute disposee a se moquer de tout le monde, quelquefois avec esprit."

From this stage she could be wakened to the normal state by the
person who had hypnotised her, but by no one else (see Vol. I., p. 88,
note); if not wakened she soon relapsed again into the state of deep sleep.

The first phenomena suggestive of " psychical " influence presented
themselves in the process of hypnotisation.

" M. Gibert tenait un jour la main de Mme. B. pour Fendormir ; mais
il etait visiblement preoccupe et songeait a autre chose qu'a ce qu'il
faisait : le sommeil ne se produisit pas du tout. Cette experience rep^tee
par moi de diverses manieres nous a prouve que pour endormir Mme. B.
il fallait concentrer fortement sa pensee sur Fordre du sommeil qu'on lui
donnait, et que plus la pensee de Foperateur e*tait distraite, plus le
sommeil e"tait difficile a provoquer. Cette influence de la pensee de
FopeYateur, quelque extraordinaire que cela paraisse, est ici tout & fait
preponderance, a un tel point qu'elle peut remplacer toutes les autres. Si
on presse la main de Mme. B. sans songer a Fendormir, on n'arrive pas a
provoquer le sommeil ; au contraire, si Fon songe a Fendormir sans lui
presser la main, on y reussit parfaitement."

Experiments of this sort were often repeated ; but it is impossible, as M.
Janet fully recognises, absolutely to exclude the hypothesis that the
hypnotisation was due to some suggestion of the purpose in view, uncon-
sciously conveyed by gesture, or attitude, or mere silence and appearance
of expectation. This objection would not apply to other cases in which
M. Gibert, without warning, and at a moment then and there fixed on by
M. Janet or another friend, produced a distinct effect on the subject from
another part of the town — the fact being immediately verified by M.
Janet ; who on one occasion found that the " subject," on feeling the
impulse to sleep, had only prevented herself from yielding to it by putting
her hands in cold water ; and on two others, found her in a deep trance
from which only M. Gibert could wake her. On the last of these occasions,
M. Gibert, at a distance, further willed three times, at intervals of 5
minutes, the performance of certain actions during the trance, which the
entranced " subject " began to execute, though obviously rebelling against
the impulse, and ending with a laugh, " Vous ne pouvez pas .
si peu, si peu que vous soyez distrait, je me rattrape."

" Mais les suggestions mentales, car ce mot me parait ici bien a sa
place, peuvent etre faites sur Mme. B. d'une autre maniere et avoir un
tout autre succes. On re'ussit peu, comme nous Favons dit, quand on lui
commande d'executer Fordre imme'diatement pendant le sommeil ; on
re'ussit beaucoup mieux quand on lui commande mentalement une action a
executer plus tard quelque temps apres le reVeil. Le 8 octobre M. Gibert
fit une suggestion de ce genre : sans prononcer aucun mot il approcha son
front de celui de Mme. B. pendant le sommeil lethargique, et pendant
quelques instants concentra sa pensee sur Fordre qu'il lui donnait.
Mme. B. parut ressentir une impression penible et poussa un gemissement ;
d'ailleurs le sommeil ne parut pas du tout etre derange. M. Gibert ne dit

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 681

a personne 1'ordre qu'il avait donne* et se contenta de 1'ecrire sur un papier
qu'il mit sous enveloppe. Le lendemain je revins aupres de Mme. B. pour
voir 1'effet de cette suggestion qui devait s'exe*cuter entre 1 1 heures et
midi. All heures 1/2 cette femme manifeste la plus grande agitation,
quitte la cuisine ou elle ^tait, et va dans une chambre prendre un verre
qu'elle emporte ; puis, surmontant sa timidite", se decide & entrer dans le
salon ou je me trouvais, et toute e'mue demande si on ne 1'a pas appele'e ;
sur ma r^ponse negative elle sort et continue plusieurs fois a monter de la
cuisine au salon sans rien apporter d'ailleurs. Elle ne fit rien de plus ce
jour-la, car bientot elle tomba endormie a distance par M. Gibert. Voici
ce qu'elle raconta pendant son sommeil : ' Je tremblais quand je suis
venue vous demander si on m'avait appele'e — il fallait que je vienne —
c'e'tait pas commode de venir avec ce plateau — pourquoi veut-on me faire
porter des verres — qu'est-ce que j'allais dire, n'est-ce pas — je ne veux pas
que vous fassiez cela — il fallait bien que je dise quelque chose en venant.'
En ouvrant 1'enveloppe, je vis que M. Gibert avait command^ hier £,
Mme. B. ' d'offrir un verre d'eau a chacun de ces messieurs.' Ici encore il
faut reconnaitre que 1'expdrience n'avait pas entierement re'ussi, la sugges-
tion n'avait pas e'te exe*cutee ; peut-on nier du moins qu'elle n'ait e'te'
comprise ?

" Voici maintenant une experience plus significative. Le 10 octobre,
nous convenons, M. Gibert et moi, de faire la suggestion suivante :
' Demain k midi fermer & clef les portes de la maison.' J'inscrivis la
suggestion sur un papier que je gardais sur moi et que je ne voulus
communiquer k personne. M. Gibert fit la suggestion comme pre'ce'dem-
ment en approchant son front de celui de Mme. B. Le lendemain quand
j'arrivai & midi moins un quart je trouvai la maison barricaded et la porte
fermee & clef. Renseignements pris, c'e'tait Mme. B. qui venait de la
fermer ; quand je lui demandai pourquoi elle avait fait cet acte singulier,
elle me rdpondit : ' Je me sentais tres fatigued, et je ne voulais pas que
vous puissiez entrer pour m'endormir.' M. Bernheim et M. Richet ont
dej& parie de ces personnes qui inventent des raisons pour s'expliquer a
elles-memes un acte qu'elles font ne"cessairement sous 1'influence d'une
suggestion. Mme. B. etait k ce moment tres agitee ; elle continua k errer
dans le jardin, et je la vis cueillir une rose et aller visiter la boite aux
lettres placed pres de la porte d'entr^e. Ces actes sont sans importance,
mais il est curieux de remarquer que c'e'tait pre'cise'rnent les actes que nous
avions un moment song^ & lui commander la veille. Nous nous etions
de'cide's & en ordonner un autre, celui de fermer les portes, mais la pensee
des premiers avait sans doute occupe" 1'esprit de M. Gibert pendant qu'il
commandait, et elle avait eu aussi son influence.

" Voici une troisieme experience qui ne me'riterait pas d'etre raconte'e,
car elle r^ussit moins bien que la pre^edente, mais elle est interessante
cependant, car elle montre combien le sujet peut register & ces suggestions
mentales. Le 13 octobre, M. Gibert lui ordonne toujours par la pensele
d'ouvrir un parapluie le lendemain & midi et de faire deux fois le tour du
jardin. Le lendemain elle fut tres agite"e h, midi, fit deux fois le tour du
jardin, mais n'ouvrit pas de parapluie. Je 1'endormis peu de temps apres
pour calmer une agitation qui devenait de plus en plus grande. Ses
premiers mots furent ceux-ci : ' Pourquoi m'avez-vous fait marcher tout

682 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

autour du jardin — j'avais Fair bete — encore s'il avait fait le temps d'hier
par exemple — mais aujourd'hui j'aurais etc" tout a fait ridicule.' Ce
jour-la il faisait fort beau et la veille il pleuvait beaucoup : elle n'avait
pas voulu ouvrir un parapluie par un beau temps de peur de paraitre
ridicule. La suggestion avait au moins ete comprise si elle n'avait pas ete
exe"cutee entierement."

In April, 1886, Mr. Myers and Dr. A. T. Myers had the opportunity
of witnessing some further experiments made with this " subject." l
The times at which the trials were made were always chosen without
premeditation. It is true that Mme. B. had come to Havre for a few
weeks for the purpose of hypnotic experiments, and may therefore have
had a general idea that attempts to influence her from a distance
were likely to be made ; but the closeness of the coincidences, coupled
with the fact that she is not liable to go into spontaneous trances at
other times, makes it in the highest degree improbable that the
results were due to accident.

(1) " In the evening of April 22, 1886," says Mr. Myers, " we dined at
M. Gibert's, and in the evening M. Gibert made an attempt to put
Mme. B. to sleep at a distance (from his house in the Rue Sery to the
Pavilion, Rue de la Ferme), and to bring her to his own house by force of
will. At 8.55 he retired to his study ; and MM. Ochorowicz, Marillier,
Janet, and A. T. Myers went to the Pavilion, where Mme. B. was staying,
and waited outside in the street. At 9.22 Dr. Myers observed Mme. B.
coming half-way out of the garden-gate, and again retreating. Those who
saw her more closely observed that she was plainly in the somnambulic
state, and was wandering about and muttering. At 9.25 she came
out (with eyes persistently closed, so far as could be seen), walked
quickly past MM. Janet and Marillier, without noticing them, and made
for M. Gibert's house, though not by the usual or shortest 1'oute. (It
appeared afterwards that the bonne had seen her go into the salon at 8.45,
and issue thence asleep at 9.15 : had not looked in between those times.)
She avoided lamp-posts, vehicles, &c., but crossed and re-crossed the street
repeatedly. No one went in front of her or spoke to her. After eight or
ten minutes she grew much more uncertain in gait, and paused as though
she would fall. Dr. Myers noted the moment in the Rue Faure ; it
was 9.35. At about 9.40 she grew bolder, at 9.45 reached the street in
front of M. Gibert's house. There she met him, but did not notice him,
and walked into his house, where she rushed hurriedly from room to room
on the ground-floor. M. Gibert had to take her hand before she recognised
him. She then grew calm.

" M. Gibert, before hearing Dr. Myers' statement, said that from 8.55
to 9.20 he thought intently about her ; from 9.20 to 9.35 he thought more
feebly; at 9.35 he gave the experiment up, and began to play billiards ;
but in a few minutes began to will her again. It thus appeared that his
visit to the billiard-room had coincided with her hesitation and stumbling

1 A fuller account of these experiments will be found in Part X. of the Proceedings
of the S.P.R.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 683

in the street. She may, however, have hesitated merely because she was
not sure of the way.

(2) " On April 23, M. Janet lunched in our company, and retired to
his own house at 4.30 (a time chosen by lot) to try to put her to sleep
from thence. At 5.5 we all entered the salon of the Pavilion, and found
her asleep with shut eyes, but sewing vigorously (being in that stage in
which movements once suggested are automatically continued). Passing
into the talkative state, she said to M. Janet, ' C'est vous qui m'avez fait
dormir a quatre heures et demi.' The impression as to the hour may have
been a suggestion received from M. Janet's mind. We tried to make her
believe that it was M. Gibert who had sent her to sleep, but she main-
tained that she had felt that it was M. Janet.

(3) " On April 24 the whole party chanced to meet at M. Janet's
house at 3 p.m., and he then, at my suggestion, entered his study to will
that Mme. B. should sleep. We waited in his garden, and at 3.20 pro-
ceeded together to the Pavilion, which I entered first at 3.30, and found
Mme. B. profoundly asleep over her sewing, having ceased to sew.
Becoming talkative, she said to M. Janet, ' C'est vous qui m'avez
commande'e.' She said that she fell asleep at 3.5 p.m."

Writing from Havre on June 18, 1886, M. Janet gives the following
brief summary of the results obtained in the particular experiment of
inducing " sommeil a distance," during this visit of Mme. B. to Havre : —

" Ne parlons pas des suggestions de sommeil faites par la pense*e en se
tenant devant le sujet, ou meme dans une autre piece de la maison ; on
n'est jamais assez certain que le sujet ne soit pas du tout preVenu. II ne
s'agit ici que des experiences tente"es de loin, de chez M. Gibert ou de chez
moi, c'est-a-dire, a 500 metres au moins du pavilion ou se trouvait Mme.
B. Les experiences faites dans ces conditions, soit par M. Gibert, soit par
moi, sont au nombre de 21 pendant ce second sejour de Mme. B. au
Havre. Je ne compte pas un essai fait au milieu de la nuit dans des
conditions deplorables. Conside'rons comme echecs toutes les experiences
dans lesquelles le sujet n'a pas e*te trouv^ endormi quand on entrait dans
le pavilion, ou meme celles dans lesquelles le sujet a mis plus d'un
quart d'heure a s'endormir apres 1'instant de la suggestion mentale.
Le nombre de ces insucces a 6te de 6, et chacun d'eux peut avoir une ex-
plication precise. II reste a retenir 15 succes precis et complets, ou 15
coincidences extraordinaires, suivant que Ton voudra les comprendre d'une
maniere ou d'une autre."

.The next record is from M. J. Hericourt, of 50, Rue de Miromenil,
Paris.

(689) " L'observation que je rapporte ici date de 1'annee 1878, epoque a
laquelle je 1'ai communiquee a mon ami M. Charles Richet, qui 1'a gardee
fidelement et prudemment dans ses cartons, pour des raisons faciles a
comprendre.

" II s'agit d'une jeune femme de vingt-quatre ans, d'origine espagnole*
veuve et mere d'une petite fille de cinq ans. . . . L'examen le plus
minutieux n'a pu faire decouvrir chez elle aucune tare hysterique,
personnelle ou hereditaire."

M. He*ricourt easily succeeded in hypnotising Mme. D. on the first trial.

684 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

" J'eridormais Mme. D. avec une facilite chaque jour plus grande. En
effet, apres quinze jours environ de cet entramement special, je n'avais
plus besoin pour obtenir ce resultat ni du contact ni du regard : il me
suffisait de vouloir, tout en m'abstenant de toute espece de geste qui put
trahir mon intention. Etait-elle en conversation animee au milieu de
plusieurs personnes, tandis que je me tenais dans quelque coin dans
1'attitude de la plus complete indifference, que je la voyais bientdt, a mon
gre, lutter contre le sommeil qui 1'envahissait, et le subir de'finitivement,
ou reprendre le cours de ses ide*es, selon que moi-meme je continuais ou
cessais d'appliquer ma pense*e au re'sultat a obtenir.

" Et meme je pouvais regarder fixement mon sujet, lui serrer les pouces
ou les poignets, et faire toutes les passes imaginables des magnetiseurs de
profession ; si ma volonte n'etait pas de 1'endormir, il restait parfaitement
eVeille", et convaincu de mon impuissance.

" Mais bient6t, ce ne fut plus seulement d'une extre*mit^ a 1'autre d'une
chambre que je songeai a exercer mon action ; d'une piece a une autre,
d'une maison a une autre maison, situde dans une rue plus ou moins
e'loigne'e, le meme re'sultat fut encore obtenu.

" Les circonstances dans lesquelles j'exe^ai ainsi pour la premiere fois
cette action a longue distance meritent d'etre rapportees avec quelques
details. Etant un jour dans mon cabinet (j'habitais alors Perpignan),
1'idde me vint d'essayer d'endormir Mme. D., que j'avais tout lieu de croire
chez elle, et qui habitait dans une rue distante environ de 300 metres de
la mienne. J'dtais d'ailleurs bien eloigne"de croire au succes d'une pareille
experience. II e'tait trois heures de 1'apres-midi, je me mis a me promener
de long en large, en pensant tres vivement au re'sultat que je voulais
obtenir ; et j'etais absorbe par cet exercice, quand on vint me chercher
pour voir des malades. Les cas e*tant pressants, j'oubliai mornentane'ment
Mme. D. que je devais d'ailleurs rencontrer vers quatre heures et demie
sur une promenade publique. M'y etant rendu a cette heure, je fus tres
etonne* de ne 1'y point voir, mais je pensai qu'apres tout, mon experience
avait bien pu reussir ; aussi, vers cinq heures, pour ne rien compromettre
et retablir les choses en leur etat normal, dans le cas ou cet etat eut etc*
effectivement trouble*, par acquit de conscience, je songeai a reVeiller mon
sujet, aussi vigoureusement que tout a 1'heure j'avais song^ a 1'endormir.

" Or, ayant eu 1'occasion de voir Mme. D. dans la soiree, voici ce
qu'elle me raconta, d'une maniere absolument spontanee, et sans que j'eusse
fait la moindre allusion a son absence de la promenade. Vers trois heures,
comme elle etait dans sa chambre a coucher, elle avait ete prise subitement
d'une envie invincible de dormir ; ses paupieres se faisaient de plomb, et
ses jambes se de*robaieni> — jamais elle ne dormait dans la journee — au point
qu'elle avait eu h, peine la force de passer dans son salon, pour s'y laisser
tomber sur un canape. Sa domestique etant alors entree pour lui parler,
1'avait trouvee, comme elle le lui raconta plus tard, pale, la peau froide,
sans mouvement, comme morte, selon ses expressions. Justement effraye'e,
elle s'dtait mise a la secouer vigoureusement, mais sans parvenir cependant
a autre chose qu'a lui faire ouvrir les yeux. A ce moment, Mme. D. me
dit qu'elle n'avait eu conscience que d'eprouver un violent mal de tete qui,
paralt-il, avait disparu subitement vers cinq heures. C'etait pre'cisement
le moment ou j'avais pense a la reveiller.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 685

" Ce recit ayant ete spontane, je le repute, il n'y avait plus de doute a
conserver : ma tentative avait certainement reussi. Afin de pouvoir la
renouveler dans des conditions aussi probantes que possible, je ne mis pas
Mme. D. au courant de ce que j'avais fait, et j'entrepris toute une serie
d'experiences dont je rendis te*moins nombre de personnes, qui voulurent
bien en fixer les conditions et controler les resultats. Parmi ces
personnes, je citerai le meMecin-major et un capitaine du bataillon de
chasseurs dont j'etais alors 1'aide-major. Toutes ces experiences se
ramenent en somme au type suivant.

" ]£tant dans un salon avec Mme. D., je lui disais que j'allais essayer
de 1'endormir d'une piece voisine, les portes e*tant ferrne'es. Je passais
alors dans cette piece, ou je restais quelques minutes avec la pensee
bien nette de la laisser eveillee. Quand je revenais, je trouvais en
effet Mme. D. dans son etat normal, et se moquant de mon insucces. Un
instant plus tard, ou un autre jour, je passais dans la meme piece voisine
sous un pretexte quelconque, mais cette fois avec 1'intention bien arretee
de produire le sommeil, et apres une minute a peine, le resultat le plus
complet etait obtenu. On n'invoquera ici aucune suggestion autre que la
suggestion mentale, puisque 1'attention expectante, mise en jeu dans toute sa
force, lors de 1'experience precedente, avait ete absolument sans action.
Les conditions de ces experiences, qui se contrdlent reciproquement, sont
d'une simplicite et d'une valeur sur lesquelles j'attire 1'attention, parce
qu'elles constituent une sorte de schema a suivre pour la demonstration.

" Mme. D. pretendait que, toutes les fois que je pensais a elle, elle
ressentait une vive douleur dans la region precordiale ; c'e'tait d'ailleurs
cette meme douleur qu'elle eprouvait encore quand les seances de somnam-
bulisme se prolongeaient, et qui me determinait a y mettre fin. De fait,
apres convention prealable, si je voulais que Mme. D. descendit de chez
elle, je n'avais qu'a m'arreter dans une rue voisine de la sienne, et a lui en
donner 1'ordre mentalement. Je ne tardais pas a la voir arriver, et
toujours elle me disait que sa douleur au cceur lui avait indique ma
presence."

The next account, from Dr. E. Gley, of 37, Rue Claude Bernard,
Paris, records some observations of his friend, Dr. Dusart, (published
in the Tribune Medicate in May, 1875), on a girl of 14, whom he
found suffering from obstinate hysterical attacks, and for whom he
easily procured sleep by a simple hypnotic process.

(690) " J'avais observe que, quand, en faisant des passes, je me laissais
distraire par la conversation des parents, je ne parvenais jamais a
produire un sommeil suffisant, meme apres un long espace de temps. II
fallait done faire une large part a 1'intervention de ma volonte. Mais
celle-ci suffirait-elle sans le secours d'aucune manifestation exterieure?
Voila ce que je voulus savoir.

" A cet effet j'arrive un jour avant 1'heure fixee la veille pour fe
reVeil, et, sans regarder la malade, sans faire un geste, je lui donne
mentalement 1'ordre de s'eveiller : je suis aussi t6t obei. A ma volonte", le
de"lire et les cris «omrnencent. Je m'assieds alors devant le feu, le dos au
lit de la malade, laquclle avait la face tournee vers la porte de la chambre,

686 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

je cause avec les personnes presentes, sans paraitre m'occuper des cris de
Mile. J., puis, a un moment donne, sans que personne se fut apergu de ce
qui se passait en moi, je donne V ordre mental du sommeil, et celui-ci se
produit. Plus de cent fois 1'expe'rience fut faite et variee de diverses
fagons : I'ordre mental etait donne sur un signe que me faisait le Dr. X.,
et toujours 1'effet se produisait. Un jour, j 'arrive lorsque la malade etait
e'veille'e et en plein delire ; elle continue, malgre ma presence, a crier et
s'agiter, je m'assieds et j 'attends que le Dr. X. me donne le signal.
Aussitdt celui-ci donne et I'ordre mental formuie, la malade se tait et
s'endort. 'Vous saviez que j'etais la depuis quelque temps?' 'Non,
monsieur ; je ne me suis apergue de votre pre'sence qu'en sentant le
sommeil me gagner ; j'ai eu alors conscience que vous e'tiez assis devant
le feu.'

" Je donnais chaque jour, avant de partir, I'ordre de dormir jusqu' au
lendemain a une heure de'termine'e. tin jour, je pars, oubliant cette
precaution; j'etais a 700 metres quand je m'en apergus. Ne pouvant
retourner sur mes pas, je me dis que peut-etre mon ordre serait
entendu, malgre la distance, puisque a 1 ou a 2 metres un ordre mental
etait execute'. En consequence, je formule I'ordre de dormir jusqu'au
lendemain 8 heures, et je poursuis mon chemin. Le lendemain, j'arrive a
7 heures et demie ; la malade dormait. ' Comment se fait-il que vous
dormiez encore?' 'Mais, monsieur, je vous obeis.' 'Vous vous trompez ; je
suis parti sans vous donner aucun ordre.' ' C'est vrai ; mais cinq minutes
apres, je vous ai parfaitement entendu me "dire de dormir jusqu'a 8 heures.
Or il n'est pas encore 8 heures.' Cette derniere heure etant celle que
j'indiquais ordinairement, il etait possible que I'habitudefut la cause d'une
illusion et qu'il n'y cut ici qu'une simple coincidence. Pour en avoir le
cceur net et ne laisser prise a aucun doute, je commandai a la malade de
dormir jusqu'a ce qu'elle regut I'ordre de s'eveiller.

" Dans la journe'e, ayant trouve un intervalle libre, je re'solus de com-
pieter 1' experience. Je pars de chez moi (7 kilometres de distance), en
donnant I'ordre du reVeil. Je constate qu'il est 2 heures. J'arrive et
trouve la malade. e'veille'e : les parents, sur ma recommandation, avaient
note" 1'heure exacte du reveil. C'e'tait rigoureusement celle a laquelle
j'avais donne I'ordre. Cette experience, plusieurs fois renouvelde, a des
heures diff^rentes, eut toujours le meme r^sultat.

" Mais voici qui paraltra plus concluant encore.

" Le ler Janvier, je suspendis mes visites et cessai toute relation avec
la famille. Je n'en avais plus entendu parler, lorsque le 12, faisant des
courses dans une direction opposed et me trouvant a 10 kilometres de la
malade, je me demandai si, malgre la distance, la cessation de tous
rapports et 1'intervention d'une tierce personne (le pere magn^tisant
desormais sa fille), il me serait encore possible de me faire obeir. Je
defends a la malade de se laisser endormir ; puis, une demi-heure apres,
reflechissant que si, par extraordinaire, j'^tais obei, cela pourrait causer
prejudice a cette malheureuse jeune fille, je leve la defense et cesse
d'y penser.

" Je fus fort surpris, lorsque le lendemain, a 6 heures du matin, je
vis arriver chez moi un expres portant une lettre du pere de Mile. J.
Celui-ci me disait que la veille, 12, a 10 heures du matin, il n'etait

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 687

arrive" a endormir sa fille qu'apres une lutte prolonged et tres douloureuse.
La malade, une fois endormie, avait declare" que, si elle avait r^siste", c'^tait
sur mon ordre, et qu'elle ne s'e*tait endormie que quand je 1'avais permis.

"Ces declarations avaient e"t^ faites vis-a-vis de te'moins auxquels le pere
avait fait signer les notes qui les contenaient. J'ai conserve* cette lettre,

dont M. me confirma plus tard le contenu, en ajoutant quelques details

circonstancie's. "

§ 3. I come now to the spontaneous cases. The following seems
to be an instance of casual spontaneous transference of an idea ; and
strikingly exemplifies the latency of the impression, and its emergence
after several hours, which has been so frequently noted in the course
of this work. Mrs. Lethbridge, of Tregeare, Launceston, Cornwall,

writes : —

" Bella Vista, Corsier, Vevey, Switzerland.

" April 10th, 1886.

(691) "In December, 1881, my husband was slowly recovering from a
severe illness ; and one afternoon, about 5 o'clock, I went into his study,
where he had gone for 2 or 3 hours, to see if he wanted anything. Find-
ing him asleep in his armchair, I left him, and having some village
lending-library books to sort, I went into the small room where they
were kept, called the ' box-room ' (in a distant part of the house), to do so.
There, to my surprise, I saw our gamekeeper's dog, Vic, curled up. On
seeing me she rose, wagged her tail, turned half round and lay down again.
This dog had never been inside the house before, which was the reason of
my surprise at seeing her where she was. However, I turned her out
of doors, and there I thought the matter ended. I am quite sure I did not
mention the matter to my husband.

" He went to bed very early that evening, and had a most restless
night, talking a great deal in his sleep. While fast asleep he related the
whole occurrence of ' Hawke's dog, Vic,' actually being found in the
box-room, even describing the animal's behaviour, rising, turning half
round and lying down again. Next morning I asked my husband if he
had dreamt 1 ' No, not that he knew of.' If he had not dreamt of Vic 1
' No, why of Vic 1 ' Then I asked him if by any chance he had heard
where Vic had been found the previous evening ? ' No. Where ? ' And
when I told him, he was extremely astonished, just because the dog had
never been known inside the house before, and the box-room was on an
upper landing. Subsequently I related to him what he had said in his
sleep, but he evidently had not the slightest recollection of it.

"MiLLiCENT G. LETHBRIDGE."

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Lethbridge adds : —

"I am glad my account interested you, and regret extremely that it
cannot be corroborated, for I fully understand the necessity in investu
gations such as yours to obtain perfectly trustworthy evidence, and free
from intentional or unintentional exaggerations or inaccuracies. My dear
husband died about 16 months ago. On receiving your letter I tried to
find out whether he mentioned the occurrence in his diary, but un-
fortunately the diary of that year (1881) was left behind in England.

688 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

" From mine, which I succeeded in finding, written at the time, I copy
out the following brief notice, dated Dec. 14th, 1881. 'Baron talked a
great deal in his sleep last night, and curiously enough he described how
the terrier was found curled up on the mat in the box-room, which
actually happened yesterday, probably for the first time in the terrier's
life, for I was so amazed at finding the dog in so unusual a place that I
called the children to see it. But the strange part is this, Baron was
asleep in the study at the time, and no one had told him of the occurrence.
Of this I am quite sure.'

" I mentioned the occurrence to several people at the time, but as it
happened 5 years ago, I doubt if any of them would recall it quite
accurately."

[Mr. Lethbridge's complete forgetfulness is clearly a strong indication
that the news of the occurrence had not reached him in any normal way —
e.g., by overhearing the children speaking of it.]

The following experiences belong to a class whose force, in the
cumulative proof of telepathy, is comparatively small — the class of
mere impressions, without any sensory affection; but they are in
themselves well-evidenced cases, the records of the impressions having
been carefully written down before the news of the corresponding
event arrived. The narrator is Mr. J. C. Grant, of 98, Cornwall
Gardens, S.W. ; from whose very full journal they were copied by the
present writer. Mr. Grant desires that the names of the persons
mentioned shall not be printed; but says that "the fullest information
is open to private inquiry." The instance which was second in date
is given before the earlier one, as being more complete, and is the
only one to which I have attached an evidential number.

(692) Entry in diary for April 11, 1882.

" A very strange thing happened to me last night. It has happened
once before. After being asleep some little time, I was wakened up, quite
quietly and with no dread or horror, but with the absolute and certain
knowledge that there was a ' presence ' in my room. I looked everywhere
into the darkness, implored it to appear, but to no effect ; for though I have
the gift of ' feeling,' I have not that of ' sight.' I felt certain, in fact was
told by it, that it was to do with Bruce [Christian name]. I thought it
was his father — I was sure it was : I thought he must be dead. l All this
took place in about a couple of minutes or so ; and as I saw I could see
nothing, I got up, struck a match, lighted the candle at my bedside, and
looked at my watch. It was just 14 minutes past 12 o'clock. I then put
out the candle ; but all feeling of the presence had gone. It had spoken
as only a spirit 2 can speak, and then had passed away. I did not get to
sleep for a long time, and was very unhappy for poor Bruce. ... I

1 Mr. Grant explains this sentence as follows : — "I knew his father to be very
seriously ill, which no doubt was the reason why my thoughts took this direction."

2 See p, 48, note.

. - IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 689

have been quite out of sorts all day for poor old Bruce, to whom I wrote
this morning. Told M. and R. of my feeling and experiences of the night."

[The entry for April 12 mentions a conversation with Mr. and Mrs. M.,
in which Mr. Grant remembers that he described the occurrence.]

Entry for April 13.

" In afternoon went over to my aunt M.'s, had a long talk with her,
told her and J. and others all about my presentiment. I have not heard
from poor Bruce yet."

Entry for April 14.

" Up early, at half -past seven — expecting a letter. The letter has
come, as I expected — deep black edge ; but it is not his father, but his
brother, that has died, poor old E., date and all, on Tuesday. ... I
wrote to him this morning. I will not tell him of my strange meeting of
Tuesday morning or Monday night. . . . Witnesses to this strange
pre-knowledge of -mine : Mrs. R., my housekeeper ; Mrs. C., my aunt ; J.,
my cousin (Captain C.) ; other cousins, Mrs. M. and Mr. M., Mr. H. R.,
and Mme. G. So you see l I am not without my authorities, besides my
written journal."

Entry for April 15.

" Wrote a long letter to my father, giving him what news there was,
and telling him about my queer experience."

The following is a copy, made by the present writer, of a letter written
to Mr. Grant by Mr. M., on June 3, 1886 :—

" We distinctly remember your telling us about the strange circum-
stance that took place before2 the death of one of your friends. The
details have escaped our memory, but we remember that it was a case of
premonition, which was afterwards verified. " C. W. M."

The date of death appears in the Times obituary as April 10, 1882.
This was Monday, not Tuesday ; and probably Mr. Grant assumed that
the day on which his friend heard of the death was the day of the death
itself. The death, which took place in China, can only have fallen within
12 hours of his experience if it occurred in the few hours preceding
midnight.

Mr. E. T. R., who died, was an intimate friend of Mr. Grant's, but
not so intimate as his brother Bruce.

Entry in diary for Wednesday, Dec. 10, 1879. (Mr. Grant was at
the time in Southern India.)

" Yesterday I had a peculiar sensation. When I say yesterday, I
mean last night. ... I have as it were an inner eye opened. I had
a sort of unconscious feeling that, if I were to wish it, I could see some
strange visitant in the chamber with me — someone disembodied. [Here

4

1 The journal, though a private one, is in many parts written as if addressed to an
imaginary reader.

2 The wording of this letter, and Mr. Grant's expressions above, illustrate what I
have more than once remarked on — the common tendency to describe what are really
telepathic impressions, coinciding with or closely following real events, as prophetic and
premonitory. See p. 535, note, and p. 569.

VOL. II. 2 Y

690 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

follow some words of description which, though general and not distinctive,
apply perfectly to the particular person who, as it turned out, died at
the time, and would have applied equally naturally to only a small
group of persons. Mr. Grant has what appear to me valid reasons for
withholding the clause from publication.] I forced the idea from me, and
fell into a troubled sleep."

Entry for Dec. 11.

" Went in afternoon to the library ; thence to C.'s. Hear by telegram,
while there, of the death of my uncle, Mr. C., on Tuesday. Wonder if
that had anything to do with my feelings the night before last."

We find in the obituary of a leading newspaper that the death took
place on Dec. 9, 1879.

Mr. Grant states that he had had no idea that anything was the matter
with his uncle.

I have studied in Mr. Grant's diary the full record of a third case,
which was even more remarkable than the first, as it included the peculi-
arity that, for some time after his first impression, he felt forcibly impelled
to draw the figure of the person who died. The case was made the more
striking to me by the fact that Mr. Grant was so certain that the death
(the time of which he had only very vaguely learnt) must have coincided
in date with his impression, that he had actually not taken the trouble to
verify the coincidence. He left it to me to find in the Times obituary — as
he confidently foretold that I would — that the death (which was quite unex-
pected) occurred, thousands of miles from the place where he was, on the
day preceding that on which the entry in his diary, relating his impression
of the previous night, was written. The impression of that night did not,
however, bear distinct reference to the particular person who died, but was
a more general sense of calamity in the family. Certain reasons which
at present make it desirable not to publish the details of this case may in
time cease to exist.

Mr. Grant writes, on May 31, 1886 : —

" Except on these three occasions, I have never, to the best of my
recollection, had any feeling in the least resembling those described."

To pass now to examples where the senses were concerned — the
following is an auditory death-case of the ordinary type. The
narrator is Mrs. Evens, mentioned above (pp. 176 and 344).

(693) In 1885, Mrs. Evens filled up a census-form (p. 7) with the in-
formation that about September, 1858, in the early hours of the night, she
experienced an auditory hallucination representing the voice of a " most
intimate and deeply attached friend. She died suddenly that night. The
lady was French. We had been very intimate, and she had frequently
mesmerised me for neuralgia. We had been parted for more than a
year — she in France and I in England. I had been to sleep, but woke
as if I were called. I sat up, saw nothing, but heard distinctly, in the
well-known and beloved voice, ' Adieu, ma che'rie ' (her name for me).

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 691

It was not till a week after that I heard of her sudden and quite unex-
pected death (she not having been ill) on that night. At the time, I had
no feeling of surprise or fear. I may mention that only during the last
year I heard, in an indirect manner, that, under the pressure of great
horror, she was supposed to have committed suicide."

In reply to inquiries, Mrs. Evens writes : —

" Oldbank, Enniskillen.

"December, 1885.

" I was staying in a country house, but not with (at that time) very
intimate freinds, and I cannot feel sure that I mentioned the circumstance.
I shall be writing to one of them soon, and will ask if she remembers my
speaking of it at all. The recollection, except as to precise date, is as
vivid in my mind as ever — the tone of the voice, as of one not stationary,
but leaving the room by the door,1 which was on the left side and near the
head of my bed ; and likewise the words, distinctly spoken. I left France
in 1857, and my friend died in 1858. It was the year before my marriage,
and I was then a girl of 20. I had no terror, or even surprise ; but
equally little when I heard of her sudden death, which I seemed to have
foreknown. As to the hour, I gathered that it must have been tolerably
simultaneous with the death. We did not go to our rooms till 1 1 ever in
that house. I had the sensation of being awoke out of my first sleep.
My friend was found dead and cold (in her house in Alsace) between 4
and 5 in the morning. Having led a wandering life since my marriage, I
have kept no letters of so long ago. The circumstances of the loss of my
beloved friend, and my firm belief in her desire to take leave of me, are
both indelibly impressed on my memory. I wish, for the sake of science,
my details were more satisfactory.

" I was a parlour boarder from '55 to '57 (inclusive) at the Chateau
Giron, then a large and well-known school. Mme. H. was one of the
principals ; the friendship between us was of a very close and unusual
kind. She was just the sort of woman whose ' will ' once more to see a
dear friend would triumph over almost any difficulties, as I always
believe it did. ,< AGNES EVENS."

In reply to further inquiries, Mrs. Evens adds : —

" In my own mind I always associate the hearing of the voice with a
Sunday night. You will say this is unreliable, and so it is, but I find
that in the recollection of my domestic events, births, deaths, &c., my
recollection of the day of the week, with its associations, is more reliable
than that of the date.

" As to any other [auditory] hallucinations, the only one I can remember
is the sound of music unusual in character, &c., but it took place when I
was worn out with nursing and grief, and I have always assigned it to an
abnormal condition of the nervous system, associated with a time of
such sorrow that I can hardly bear to go back upon it.

" I seemed not so much to be awoke by the voice as to wake to hear
it. I had no doubt as to whose it was ; it produced the effect of a passing,
not stationary, voice ; the words, distinctly uttered, were ' adieu, ma
cheYie.' I heard yesterday from the friend with whom I was staying at

1 I have mentioned (Vol. i., p. 573) how frequently visual hallucinations, alike of t
subjective and the telepathic class, present this feature of movement.

VOL. II. 2 Y 2

692 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

the time. She says, ' We both' (herself and sister) ' well remember about
your friend Mme H., and what a terrible attack of neuralgia you had
just at the time when she died.' I had forgotten this latter circumstance.
It would account in some measure for the want of distinctness in my
recollections."

We have procured from the Registrar at Rappoltsweiler an official
certificate of the death, which states that it occurred at 2 p.m., on Sept. 5th,
1858. This was a Sunday — which confirms Mrs. Evens' recollection. The
death must have preceded her experience by at least 10 hours.

The next case, also auditory, is apparently one of direct repro-
duction of the agent's sensation. (See cases 267-270.) It is from
Mr. J. G. F. Russell, of Aden, Aberdeenshire (the narrator of
case 196). The agent was a near relative who had been making a
long stay with Mr. and Mrs. Russell.

" 32, Upper Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, W.

"December 18th, 1885.

(694) " On Wednesday, December 2nd, 1885, I was woke up at night,
between 12 p.m. and 2 a.m. (as far as I can recollect), by hearing myself
distinctly called from a small passage outside my bedroom door ; the voice
seemed to come from just outside the door itself. I got up, fearing Mrs.
Waller, in the adjoining room, was ill, but, as the calling of my name was
no longer repeated, I did not then disturb her. (There is no door of
communication between the rooms, the wall is solid, and a gigantic
wardrobe is against it.) Next morning I asked her if she had called me
during the night ; but she declared she had slept ' like a top,' and had
never thought of me or anyone else. I did not mention the incident to
her sister (who had just left us after a long visit), but she (Mrs. Waller)
did, on returning to the country. I enclose what Miss Young wrote to
me, solely from her sister mentioning to her my having questioned her.
The dates correspond exactly ; it was the first night of Mrs. Waller's visit.

" J. G. F. RUSSELL."
The following is the extract from Miss Young's letter to Mr. Russell : —

" I will tell you something that has struck me rather. The two nights
my sister was with you in London were very disturbed nights to me ; you
were continually in my dreams, and one of those nights I found myself
sitting up in bed, having woke myself up by calling you loudly by name.
When she came back she told me you had asked her one morning whether
she had called you in the night, as you had distinctly heard your name.
I wish I could remember which night it was. I have an impression it was

the first- « BLANCHE YOUNG."

Mr. Russell (who gave me the account vivd voce on December 16th,
a fortnight after the occurrence,) has explained that the wall between his
room and the next is so thick that even a very loud cry in one would be
almost inaudible in the other. He has never had such a hallucination
on any other occasion.

7^ THEIR PROPER PLACES. 693

The following cases are visual. The first is from Mr. Teale, of

50, Hawley Road, Kentish Town, N.W.

"June, 1886.

(695) " In 1884, my son Walter was serving in the 3rd King's Royal
Rifles Regiment, in the Soudan. The last we had heard from him was a
letter informing us that he was about to return to England, which he
expected would be about Christmas time. Things were in this position on
the 24th October, 1884, when on returning home in the evening, I said,
(noticing my wife looking very white,) ' Whatever is the matter with
you 1 ' and she said she had seen Walter, and he had stooped down to kiss
her, but owing to her starting he — like — was gone, so she did not receive
the kiss.

"After that we had a letter from the lady nurse at Ramleh
Hospital to say that the poor boy had a third relapse of enteric fever ;
they thought he would have pulled through, but he had been taken, and
when we had that letter, it was a week after he died. But the date when
the letter was written corresponded with the date of the day when Walter
appeared, which was on the 24th October, 1884.

[When Mr. Teale used these words, he had not referred to the letter,
and was under the impression that it had been written on the very day
of the death, which (as will be seen below) was October 24.]

" My son Frederick, Selina, and Nelly were in the room, but none of
them saw Walter ; only Fred heard his mother scream, ' Oh ! ' and Fred
asked her what was the matter. I thought, having heard many tales of
this kind, I would set it down ; so I put the date on a slip of paper. He
was in his regimentals, and she thought he had come on furlough to take
her by surprise — knowing the back way ; but when she saw he was gone,
and the door not open, she got dreadfully frightened.

"FRED. J. TEALE."

Mrs. Teale herself died in April, 1886, after an illness due in great
measure to the shock of the bereavement.

Mr. Teale has shown me the letters which were received during August,
September and October, 1884, respecting his son's condition. A letter,
dated August 20, which the son dictated and signed, states that he is in
hospital, down with enteric fever. The next letter, dated September 7,
which was similarly dictated and signed, states that he has had a very
serious illness, but is much better, and hopes soon to be home. The next
letter, dated October 12, from Sister Thomas, states that he had had a
bad relapse a fortnight previously, but " is getting on very nicely now."
This was the last letter received before October 24. In a letter dated
October 52, Lieutenant W. H. Kennedy states that the death had taken
place on the preceding day ; and in a letter dated October 28, Sister
Thomas states that the death occurred about 2 o'clock p.m., on Friday,
October 24. This date has been confirmed to us by an official communica-*
tion from the Dep6t at Winchester.

In conversation, Mr. Teale explained to me that his wife's experience
took place between 7 and 8 in the evening — which would be between 7
and 8 hours after the death. She was at the time sitting at the table,
talking. The son who was present is at a distance ; but Miss Teale

694 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

showed me how the persons in the room were placed, and described
to me how she saw her mother start, and heard her exclamation.
Mr. Teale is certain that his wife never experienced any other visual
hallucination ; and he says that she was of anything but a brooding tem-
perament, and was not at the time anxious about her son. His note of
the date of the vision was on the back of an envelope, which he carried
in his pocket-book. He thought that this envelope was lost ; but was
kind enough, at my request, to make a search, which brought it to light.
The envelope, which lies before me, bears his address, and the post-mark
London, N., Feb. 22, 84 ; the pencil note on the back of it is 24-10-84.

The next case is from the Rev. R. Markham Hill, of St.

Catherine's, Lincoln.

"June 17, 1886.

(696) " On the evening of Easter Sunday, about 8 or 9 years ago, I
think, I was just beginning my supper, feeling very tired after the day's
work, when I saw the door opening behind me.1 I was sitting with my
back to the door, but could just see it over my shoulder. I may also
have heard the opening, but cannot speak with certainty upon this point.
I turned half round, and just had time to see the figure of a tall man
rushing hastily into the room, as if to attack me. I sprang up at once,
turned round, and threw the glass, which I held in my hand, at the spot
where I had seen the figure, which had disappeared in the act of my
rising. The disappearance had, however, been too sudden to arrest the
act of throwing. I then realised that I had seen an apparition, and I
immediately connected it with one of my uncles, whom I knew to be
seriously ill. Moreover, the figure which I saw resembled my uncle in
stature. Mr. Adcock came in, and found me quite unnerved by the
occurrence ; and to him I related the circumstances. I don't remember
telling him that I connected the vision with my uncle. The next day a
telegram came announcing my uncle's death on the Sunday. My father
was summoned to my uncle's death-bed unexpectedly, on the Sunday
evening as he was sitting at supper, and the death must have coincided in
time with what I saw. « R MARKHAM HILL."

The Rev. H. Adcock, of Lincoln, writes: — « June 16 1886

" I called on my friend, the Rev. Markham Hill, one evening, and
found him apparently in an exhausted condition in an arm-chair ; he told
me, before I could ask for any explanation, that he had just seen the figure
of his uncle standing opposite to him against the wall, behind a piano; that
he lifted up a glass from the table, and was about to throw it at him, when
the figure vanished. He said he felt convinced that he should very shortly
hear of his uncle's death. It was only the following day, or the day after,
that he showed me a letter received that morning informing him that his
uncle had died on the day when the appearance took place."

In conversation, Mr. Podmore learnt from Mr. Hill that he was alone
at the time. He has had no other visual hallucination in his life, unless
it were an experience which impressed him in somewhat the same way as
this one, but which may well have been merely a case of mistaken identity.

1 See p. 612, note.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 695

Mr. Adcock explained that the above incident must have occurred
about 12 years ago. He cannot remember whether it was a Sunday
evening.

We find from the Register of Deaths that Mr. Hill's uncle died on
April 5, 1874, which was Easter Sunday.

[It would be difficult to account for the hallucination here as due to
anxiety respecting the uncle's condition. If a person's mind, from brooding
over the condition of a sick relative, is led to evolve a phantasm of that
relative, we should certainly expect the appearance to be recognised ; and
we should not expect its character to be at once unfamiliar and formidable.

It will be seen that the two accounts differ as to whether the glass was
actually thrown.]

The next example belongs to the " borderland" class. It is one of
the cases where the agent's bond of connection has apparently been
with someone who was in the percipient's company at the time of the
experience, rather than with the actual percipient. (Cf. Nos. 242 and
355.) The narrator desires that his name may not appear, as the
family of the agent, whom he has already assisted liberally, might
base on the incident described a sentimental claim to further favours.

"June 12, 1886.

(697) " There can be no doubt whatever that there is some trans-
mission for which no explanation has yet been given by the savants.

" I am a practical business man, and look upon all theories of
Spiritualism, &c., as so much humbug that only deludes weak-minded
people. But at the same time, I recently had an experience of a most
extraordinary character, which I should scarcely have believed if related to
me of anyone else, and the plain facts of which I will give as they actually
occurred.

" I had in my employ a clerk who contracted an illness which
incapacitated him from regular attendance at his duties. He was absent
about six months in 1884, and, on leaving the hospital, as I found that he
was unable to resume his regular work, I agreed with him that he should
come to the office whenever he felt able to do so, and that I would pay
him for the work so done. This arrangement continued for some months ;
then, at the beginning of April, 1885, he had to stay away altogether for
two' or three weeks. He seemed in fair general health, but he was
troubled with a diseased ankle-joint, which prevented him from getting
about. I was in no anxiety on his account, however, and had no
apprehension of any serious illness. My wife, who knew Mr. Z. from
seeing him occasionally at my private house, did not even know that he
was absent from the office at this time.

" On the night of the 27th-28th April, I was wakened by my wife"
calling out convulsively, ' There is someone looking at you.' Though by
no means timid as a rule — a practical woman, not subject to nervous
fancies of any kind — she was much disturbed and terrified. She jumped
out of bed, and turned up the gas. Finding no intruder in the room, and
all the doors locked, she got back into bed ; but she was shivering all over,

696 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

and it was some time before I succeeded in quieting her. The clock in
the hall struck 1 during this disturbance.

" In the morning we referred to the incident, and I told my wife she
must have been suffering from nightmare.

" Later on that day, news was brought to my office that poor Z. had
passed away in the night. When I got home in the evening, my wife met
me as usual at the door, and I said to her, ' I have some sad news to tell
you.' Before I could say more she replied, ' I know what it is ; poor Z. is
dead. It was his face which I saw looking at you last night.'

" I afterwards learnt, from a man who lodged in Mrs. Z.'s house, that
he had died just at 1 o'clock in the morning of the 28th, and that in the
delirium which preceded his death, he called upon me to look after his
wife and children when he was gone."

Mrs. B., the percipient, writes : —

" I have read this paper through, and the contents correctly describe
what transpired. I was awake, when I saw the face. I have never
experienced any similar occurrence."

[The last sentence is in answer to the question whether she had
experienced a hallucination of the. senses on any other occasion.]

We have verified in the Times obituary the fact that Z. died on
April 28, 1885.

Mr. Podmore has examined the clerk whom Mr. B. despatched to make
inquiries of the widow on hearing of the death, — i.e., on the afternoon of
April 28 — and who has since heard Mrs. B. narrate her experience. So
far as he could recollect, Mrs. Z. told him that Z. died about 1.30 a.m.,
certainly at an early hour in the morning. He did not remember to have
heard anything about the dying words, &c.

The following is a " borderland " case of the ordinary type. The
percipient, Emma Burger, has been for 6 years in the service of our
friend and colleague, M. Ch. Bichet, and has his most complete con-
fidence. Mr. Richet writes : —

"Mars, 1886.

(698) " Emma Burger, age'e de 24 ans, nee a Malsch, pres de Radstadt,
avait e'te' fiance'e a Paris avec M. Charles Br. Le mariage e'tait convenu.
Emma B. partit le 1 aout a Usrel (Correze), chez Madame d'TL, ou elle
e'tait alors en service. La sant^ de M. Charles Br. e'tait bonne, ou du
moins il avait toutes les apparences de la sante'. En tout cas le mariage
e'tait de'cide', et Emma B. n'avait aucune inquietude sur Fe'tat de la sant^
de son fiance'.

" Quelques jours aprds son arrived a Usrel, le 7 ou 8 aout, Emma B.
re9ut une lettre de Charles, lui apprenant que pour affaires de famille il
quittait Paris, et allait passer quelques jours dans les Ardennes.

" Le 15 aout, jour de la fete de Sainte Vierge, Emma B., quoique
n'dtant pas deVote, se sentit prise d'une grande tristesse et pleura abon-
damment au pelerinage qui avait lieu alors a Usrel.

"Le soir de ce meme jour, 15 aout, E. couchait comme d'habitude
dans un cabinet de toilette contigu a la chambre de Madame d'U. A
cote* de son lit e'tait la petite porte d'un escalier de service, porte masqu^e
par le rideau du lit, de sorte qu'une personne qui etait dans de lit devait se

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 697

lever et ^carter le rideau du bas du lit pour voir qui entrait par 1'escalier.
Voici le re'cit que m'a fait E.

" ' Vers onze heures et demie du soir je venais de me mettre au lit ; les
doruestiques n'e'taient pas encore couches tous, parcequ'on entendait encore
du bruit dans la maison. Madame d'U. e'tait couche'e dans la chambre
voisine, dont la porte de communication e'tait ouverte. J'ai alors entendu
un \4ger bruit, comme si la porte du petit escalier s'ouvrait. Je me suis
mise a genoux sur mon lit pour soulever le rideau et preVenir la personne
qui entrait que Madame d'U. e'tant couche'e, il ne fallait pas faire de bruit,
ni passer par sa chambre. C'est alors que j'ai apergu distinctement la
personne de Charles Br. II e'tait debout, son chapeau et sa canne a la
main droite, de la main gauche tenant la porte entr'ouverte, et restant
dans 1'entrebaillement de la porte. II avait un costume de voyage — son
costume habituel. II y avait une veilleuse dans la chambre, mais j'e'tais
tellement surprise que je ne me suis pas demand^ si la clart^ de la veilleuse
suffisait pour expliquer 1'extreme nettete" avec laquelle j'ai apergu tous ses
traits, sa physionomie, et le detail de son costume. II avait une figure
souriante, et il m'a regarded sans rien dire, en s'arretant dans la porte.
Alors je lui ai dit avec se've'rite', ne pouvant, quelque invraisemblable
que fut son arrivee soudaine a Usrel, pas supposer que ce ne fut pas
Charles Br. lui-meme, " Mais que venez-vous faire ici ? Madame d'U. est
la. Partez ! partez done ! " Puis, comme il ne disait rien, j'ai repris de
nouveau, " Qu'est-ce que vous me voulez ? Partez, partez done ! " Alors il
m'a re'pondu, en souriant et avec une grande tranquillity " Je viens vous
faire mes adieux ; je pars en voyage. Adieu ! " C'est a ce moment que
Madame d'U., qui ^tait dans la chambre voisine, et qui, n'e'tant pas
endormie encore, lisait dans son lit, m'ayant entendu parler tout haut, me
dit, " Mais qu'avez-vous done, E. ? vous revez ! " Mais moi, au lieu de lui
re"pondre, croyant toujours que Charles Br. e'tait reellement devant moi, je
lui dis, et cette fois a voix plus basse, " Mais partez done, partez done." Et
alors il disparut, non pas subitement mais comme quelqu'un qui ferine une
porte et qui s'en va.1 C'est alors seulement que, sur une nouvelle demande
plus pressante de Madame d'U., je lui re'pondis, " Mais oui, madame,
j'ai eu un cauchernar."

" ' J'e'tais parfaitement e'veille'e, puisque je ne m'e'tais pas endormie, et
que je venais a peine de me coucher. Je pensai alors, restant encore
quelque temps e'veille'e, que Charles Br. e'tait venu me surprendre, et je me
mis a regretter de ne pas lui avoir demande ou il allait en voyage. Mais
je ne m'en pre'occupai pas outre mesure, et au bout d'un certain temps je
m'endormis tres tranquillement, sans supposer le moins du monde qu'il ne
s'agissait pas de la presence formelle, en chair et en os, de Charles Br. a la
porte de ma chambre.

" ' Le lendemain matin je fus fort e'tonne'e de ne pas entendre parler de
Charles Br. Je crus qu'on jouait avec moi une sorte de come'die ; enfin je
me de'cidai a demander si on n'avait pas fait venir quelqu'un dans ma
chambre. On m'assura que non ; on me plaisanta de mes reves, et je finis
par croire que j'avais reve", ou plut6t, par une sorte d'inconse'quence, je

1 This way of describing the sense of a door closing is of interest, suggesting a vaguer
form of what in other cases has appeared as a distinct part of the hallucination. See
p. 612, note ; and compare case 696.

698 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

n'arretai pas ma pensee sur les invraisemblances accumule'es de cette visite.
Je saurai bien la veYite, me disais-je, quand il e'crira.

" ' Le lendemain, 1 8 aout, vers neuf heures du matin, je regus la lettre
suivante : —

" ' " MADEMOISELLE, — Monsieur C. vient de recevoir par de*peche tele*-
graphique la nouvelle de la mort de M. Charles Br. II est inort le 16 du
courant. Nous nous joignons a vous pour le regretter.

" ' " PERRIN, Concierge.

" ' " 26, Rue Marignan, Paris.
"< "le 18 aout.'"1

[M. Richet has seen and transcribed this letter.]

"' On jugera de ma stupeur quand je regus cette lettre. Depuis j'ai
appris que Charles Br. e*tait mort dans la nuit du 15 au 16 aout, d'une
maladie du cceur que tout le monde ignorait, et qui ne s'e'tait anteYieure-
ment traduite par aucun symptome.' "

We have made repeated and urgent applications to the Maire of the
commune where the death occurred, for a copy of the Acte de Deces, but
have received no reply.

The Vicomtesse d'Ussel wrote to us on April 1, 1886, that Emma
Burger was in her service in the summer of 1875, at Correze, and slept in
a room adjoining her own ; but she does not remember hearing of the
incident. She remembers noticing, however, towards the end of the
stay, that Emma Burger was in distress, and learning afterwards that this
was due to the death of some one about whom Emma had never told her.

The percipient has had in her life two hallucinations representing a
person whom she knew to be dead. But the first of these did not occur
till 9 years after the incident above described ; and they can scarcely
therefore be regarded as diminishing the force of the coincidence.

The following is a copy made by M. Richet of a letter written to
Emma Burger by a friend, Madame Aurousseaux, who heard from her of
the vision before the news of the death arrived.

" Vous me demandez si je me souviens de votre reve. Je m'en souviens
comme si c'e'tait d'aujourd'hui. Je me rappelle parfaitement de notre
pe'lerinage & la Vierge, et de tout ce que vous m'avez raconte* au sujet de
votre reve, et aussi de votre fiance"."

On May 13, 1886, M. Richet writes :—

" Pour ce qui concerne le cas de Charles Br. je puis vous donner
d'inteYessants details. J'ai pu faire venir chez moi la personne qui a eu
la confidence de Emma Burger avant que la mort de Charles Br. soit
connue, et voici ce qu'elle m'a raconte. 'Le 15 aout, jour de la fete de la
Yierge, Emma n'etait pas comme d'ordinaire. Elle e*tait triste et
cherchait a s'e'gayer ; elle e"tait a peu pres comme folle ce jour-la. Le soir
il y a eu un grand diner, mais, comme Emma etait la bonne d'un enfant,
elle a dine* dans la chambre de Fenfant avec moi, qui dtais alors nourrice.
Puis, vers dix heures nous nous sommes couche"es, chacune dans notre
chambre, mon nourisson dormant avec moi dans ma chambre, Emma
couchant seule dans une petite chambre contigue a la grande chambre de
Madame d'U. Le lendemain matin, elle a dit & Jeanne, la femme-de-

1 II y a une erreur ; c'est le 17 aout que la lettre a e"te" e'crite.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 699

chambre de la Comtesse d'U., " Vous m'avez done envoye" quelqu'un cette
nuit." Jeanne s'est mise a rire, et alors Emma m'a raconte' qu'elle avait
fait un reve tres heureux, qu'elle avait vu son fiance' dans sa chambre, puis
quand elle s'est re'veille'e qu'elle s'est sentie tres triste, et qu'elle n'a pu
dormir le reste de la nuit. Alors je lui ai dit, " Taisez-vous done, vous
£tes folle," et nous nous sommes toutes moquees d'elle. Mais elle dit,
" Je suis sur que c'est lui qui est venu, et on ne m'otera pas de Fidde que c'est
vrai. Vous pouvez vous moquer de moi, mais je crois bien que c'est vrai." '
" 'JEANNE AUROUSSEATJX, a Tragny, Nievre.'

" P.S. — Je viens de montrer a Emma Burger la lettre que je vous
e"cris, car j'ai interroge' Aurousseaux hors la presence d'Emma. Elle
1'approuve completement, mais dit seulement qu'au lieu de se croire
heureuse elle e'tait tres ennuy^e, sans etre inquiete, et que c'e'tait par suite
des moqueries dont on 1'avait assaillie qu'elle avait repondu, ' Eh bien oui !
j'e'tais tres contente de voir mon fiance*.' "

The following is a collective case. It will be seen that we have
no proof that the second witness independently recognised the figure ;
at the same time, the way in which the figure disappeared, if
correctly remembered, tells strongly against the hypothesis of
mistaken identity. The narrator is Mr. Amos Beardsley, M.R.C.S., of
Grange-over-Sands, Lancashire. He had sent us a shorter account
in 1883.

"June 28th, 1886.

(699) "From 1845 to '50 I lived between the villages of H and

L — • — , in Derbyshire. The landlord of the chief hotel in L had a

farm just opposite my house, from which I used to get my supplies of
milk and other dairy produce. I had also been called in on one occasion
to attend his wife in illness. One evening, probably in August or
September, I had been out with my boy, John Howitt — a connection of
the poet, William Howitt — hunting for moths, and was returning home
about 9 p.m., as far as I can remember. We had just passed a railway
cutting which crossed the road, or rather which was intended to cross the
road ; for the cutting — 16 or 20 feet deep — had been brought within a
few yards of the roadway on either side, but had not yet been carried
through it. Just after passing this part I turned round, and saw, as I
thought, E., the owner of the farm referred to, crossing the road — having
apparently just come in by a footpath on the right — in the direction of a
corresponding footpath a little lower down on the left. I had noticed that
the cutting had been carried right through the footpath, so that passengers
would have to make a detour, and thinking that E. was probably not
aware of this, and might run some risk of falling down the embankment,
I sent the lad after him, to warn him of the danger. The lad ran off at
once ; the distance was not more than 100 yards or so; but when he got
to the stile, the man was nowhere to be seen. He could not have got clear
away in that short interval ; but we searched the cutting to see if he had
by any ill-chance fallen down there. There was nothing to be seen ; and
after spending about half an hour in a fruitless search, we returned home.

700 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

Next morning, Howitt came to me with a scared face to tell me that E.
had fallen down dead the night before, about 9 p.m., just after he had
offered to make a blasphemous wager.

" That is all the story. I could not, and did not, for a moment doubt
my recognition of E.'s figure. My eyesight is good, and I think it hardly
possible that I could have been mistaken. Why the apparition should
have come to me I cannot say, unless, perhaps, the dying man's thoughts
turned instinctively towards me as a doctor. I have never had any hallu-
cination of the senses, — unless this apparition was one."

We find from the Register of Deaths that E. was found dead in his
bed, from heart-disease, on July 25, 1847. Dr. Beardsley does not profess
to have gathered the circumstances of his death from eye-witnesses ; and
the imagination of neighbours would be likely to exaggerate the suddenness
with which the supposed punishment followed on the transgression.

Mr. Podmore has questioned Mr. John Howitt, now butler at the Ship-
Building Yard Board Rooms, Barrow. He has no real independent memory
of the incident, though when Mr. Podmore repeated Dr. Beardsley's
account, he said, " Now you seem to bring it all back to me." He was
only 14 at the time.

Dreams, as has been so often pointed out, being a specially weak
class of evidence, it was not my intention to give any further
specimens in this chapter ; but at the last moment some records have
been received which claim admittance. "The force of cases where a
dream exactly reproduces the thoughts of a person in the dreamer's
vicinity is so much increased by their multiplication in the experience
of the same two persons, that the following additional instance, from the
narrators of case 90, needs no apology. Mrs. Fielding writes : —

" Yarlington Rectory, Bath, 19th May, 1886.

(700) " I sleep badly, and on Monday night it was 2 o'clock when I
slept. I had, for half-an-hour before going off, fixed my mind upon every
turn and corner of my girlhood's home (where I have not been for above 20
years) in Scotland. My father, a squire, had a neighbour squire, called
Harvey Brown. In my whiling away the night, I dwelt upon him, and his
house and family, particularly. My husband knew him only by name,
but of course, knew my home, and loves it as much as I do. He and I
awoke at 6. Before a word of any kind was said, he said to me, ' I have
had such a strange dream about Harvey Brown, and been at the old home,
wandering about it.' What made it seem stranger is that Harvey Brown
is a man we never spoke of in our lives, or for 20 years have ever thought
of, till Monday night in idleness I went over old meetings with him ; and
I was wide awake and my husband asleep ; he had slept heavily all the
night after a 12 mile walk ; so there was no possibility of my leading his
mind near Scotland, in any conversation even, before he slept.

"JEAN ELEANORA FIELDING.
"J. M. FIELDING."

The chief interest of the next case depends on the repetition of the
dream. I have implied (Vol. I., p. 358, note) that distinct repetition on

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 701

several successive nights, though by no means unexampled, is very
decidedly rare, in dreams of purely subjective origin ; and the repeti-
tion in a case of telepathic origin may fairly be taken as an indication
of that special intensity which is shown also in other ways — notably
often by the exceptional sense of reality surviving into waking hours
(see case 482). I do not, however, number the account, as the close-
ness of the coincidence cannot be completely determined. The
narrator is Dr. Gibert, the leading physician at Havre, who was
concerned in case 688.

" Rue Sery, le Havre.

"19 Mai, 1886.

" La scene se passait en 1849, au printemps. Un vieillard ag^ de
84 ans, du nom de Borel, grand-oncle de ma mere, demeurant pres Geneve,
au petit Sacconex, vint un samedi dejeuner a la maison. Nous demeurions
a la Monnaie, campagne aux portes de Geneve, a une distance de
4 kilometres de la demeure du vieillard. II etait parfaitement portant.
Deux jours apres sa visite, dans la nuit de dimanche au lundi, a deux
heures du matin, au milieu de son sommeil, ma mere se reVeille en criant,
' L'oncle est mort ; je le vois a terre, les bras dtendus ! ' Mon pere chercha
a la rassurer, mais la nuit fut sans sommeil.

" Le lundi, mon pere nous raconta le reve de ma mere, et nous en
rimes, lui disant que si 1'oncle e'tait mort on serait venir nous preVenir.
Dans la nuit de lundi au mardi, a la meme heure, nouveau re" veil de ma
mere, qui crie de meme, ' L'oncle est mort ! ' Enfin, dans la nuit de mardi
au mercredi, meme scene.

" Le mercredi, mon pere, qui e'tait juge de paix, me pria de Paccom-
pagner au petit Sacconex, afin de convaincre ma mere que son reve, re'pete'
trois fois, n'e"tait qu'un reve. A peine arriv^ a la demeure de nom oncle,
on nous dit que le vieillard n'avait pas paru depuis trois jours. La petite
maison isole'e e'tait close de toutes parts. Mon pere fit sauter un volet, et
nous vimes dans la cuisine le vieillard e"tendu. Nous pe'ne'trames par
l'e"curie, et j'allais relever le malheureux, qui e'tait mort, la tete dans le
foyer, face contre terre, les bras e"tendus, quand mon pere me fit remarquer
que le crane e'tait fracasse". II avait e"t^ assassin^. L'assassin fut pris,
condamnd a mort, et exe"cute\ II avoua tout apres sa condam nation. II
avait tud le vieillard le dimanche, entre midi et une heure. Le reve de
ma mere avait done eu lieu douze ou treize heures apres le crime.

"DR. GIBERT."

We have procured from the De"partement de Justice et Police, at
Geneva, a copy of the Proces-verbal made by the official who inspected
the scene of the crime immediately after the murder was discovered, and
who received on the spot the evidence of M. Gibert pere. This document
completely confirms Dr. Gibert's account of the murder, and of the dis-
covery of the body lying face downwards on the hearth — the arms
however, not " e"tendus," but " raccourcis sous 1'estomac "; but it shows
that his recollection is not correct as to dates and days. The murder
was discovered about 6 p.m. on Thursday, November 9, 1848 ; and M.
Gibert pere stated that he had made the visit to the house, which led to

702 CASES TOO LATE FOR INSERTION

the discovery, on hearing that his uncle had not been seen by the neigh-
bours since the Tuesday evening. It seems probable therefore that the
murder was committed on the Tuesday night.1 It may fairly be supposed
that Dr. Gibert is at least as likely to be right in his statement that the
dreams fell on the nights immediately preceding the discovery, as in his
statement of the particular days of the week on which they fell— since his
recollection of the days of the week is connected with his recollection,
proved incorrect, as to the day on which the murder fell ; and this
hypothesis is somewhat favoured by his recollection that there was an in-
terval of more than a day between the last visit of M. Borel to the
Giberts' house and the first dream. It is not improbable, therefore,
that one of the dreams very closely coincided with the murder. But
after this dream there would be room for only a single repetition — on
the Wednesday night.

The next two cases illustrate the point so often emphasised — the
psychological identity of dreams and waking phantasms — in a rare
and interesting way ; a telepathic impression taking effect first
as a dream, and afterwards as a hallucination. In the first of the
two cases there was an interval of a good many hours between the
two experiences.2 In the second case, the visual hallucination was
apparently a prolongation of the dream-image into waking moments
(see Vol. I., pp. 390-1) ; but the waking experience included a
further feature — a hallucination of hearing.

The following account was obtained through the kindness of
Mrs. Walwyn, of 9, Sion Hill, Clifton, Bristol, who has known the

narrator from a boy.

"February 24th, 1886.

(701) "'I dreamed that Maggie, my sister-in-law, had been taken
seriously ill. The next evening, when I went into the dining-room to have
my usual smoke previous to going to bed, just after I entered the room,
Maggie suddenly appeared, dressed in white, with a most heavenly
expression on her face. She fixed her eyes on me, walked round the
room, and disappeared through the door which leads into the garden. I
felt I could not speak ; but followed her. On opening the door and
outside shutter nothing was to be seen. I vouch for the truth of this.

" < H. E. M.' "

Mr. M.'s mother writes to Mrs. Walwyn : —

" H. and his wife were in England in the autumn, and returned on the
9th November. They had been visiting the parents in L. — General and
Mrs. R. They left the next younger sister apparently in her usual health.
On Friday, the 20th, she was at the theatre with friends. At 1 a.m. she

1 If, as Dr. Gibert says, the murderer made a full confession, it is probable that some
record of the hour of the murder exists. But we cannot obtain any information as to
such a confession, either from official sources or from the leading Geneva newspaper ; and
the Secretary of the De'partement de Justice tells us that the man always persisted in his
denial, and that the hour remained doubtful. He adds, " On a suppose1 que c'e'taitle soir."

2 Compare case 659 ; and also case 283, where the hallucination preceded the dream.
For cases where a hallucination has been itself repeated after an interval, see p. 237, note.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 703

was seized with violent internal pains ; these continued all day, but no
danger was apprehended till 4.45 p.m., when she became insensible, and
at 5.15 all was over. The cause of death, 'perforation of the stomach.'
On the Saturday night H. dreamt that Maggie had been taken dangerously
ill ; the next evening when he went into the dining-room as usual to
have his smoke previous to going to bed, just after he entered the
room Maggie suddenly appeared to him. [Mrs. M.'s description of the
appearance exactly coincides with her son's account.]

" He told me in the morning what had happened. I tried to persuade
him it was only an optical delusion, but he knew better. Why the
apparition should have come to H. is most extraordinary, for he was not
in the least superstitious, nervous, or fanciful. The only way we can
account for it is that the telegram which the General sent off on Sunday
never reached us, and it was actually Wednesday, the day of the funeral,
before we heard the sad news, and she might have known this and come
to tell us that she was gone. " R. L. M."

We find from an obituary in the Leamington News that Miss R. died
on 21st November, 1885, and that she "remained perfectly conscious
until 5 o'clock, when she suddenly collapsed and died in a quarter of an
hour."

The final case is from Mr. M. S. Griffin, of San Remo, Wey-

mouth.

"May, 1886.

(702) "I have been requested to give an account of an odd coincidence
which occurred some three years since. (I am no believer in spirits, and
believe the following was the result of illness.) I was in the tropics, and, at
the time I mention, laid up with fever, when one night I had a dream about
an old lady friend of mine. I woke up suddenly, and thought I saw her
at the foot of my bed, and the strange part was I thought I heard her
speak. She seemed to be dressed in white. I told this to a friend, who
only laughed at me and said I was ill, but at the same time, he put down
the date and hour. A few mails after, I heard of the old lady's death, at
the same date and hour. I have no belief in spirits whatever, but this
was a fact."

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Griffin supplied the following fuller
account.

"June 15, 1886.

" At the time of the occurrence, June, 1882, I had been in Jamaica
for about 18 months. I had been ill with country fever, but was
convalescent, though still very weak. I was sleeping in a room next that
of a friend, with the door open between. I had a dream, in which my
mind went back to old times when I had seen much of the lady
I mentioned ; and then I became aware that she was dead, in
a room which seemed to be near me, and that I wanted to get to he&;
and as this thought flashed across me, I seemed to see her. Then I woke
with a sudden start, and distinctly saw her standing at the foot of my bed,
dressed in white, and with the hands by her side. The face was extremely
distinct, and quite unmistakeable. Had a real person been standing in
that place, I certainly could not have distinguished the features, as it was

704 CASES TOO LATE FOB INSERTION

a dark night.1 The figure plainly pronounced my name, ' Marcus,' once,
and then gradually disappeared as I watched it. It remained visible a
sufficient number of seconds for me to be keenly aware that I was awake ;
I felt quite clearly, the former experience was a dream, then I woke, and
now this is a waking reality. After the disappearance, I called out, and
my friend came in. I described the whole experience to him, and he
was sufficiently impressed with it to notice the time — which was a few
minutes past midnight, June 1 1th — and to note the occurrence at once in his
diary. The next morning he and others laughed at the matter, but could
not but be impressed by its reality to me.

"About three weeks afterwards, I received a letter from a daughter of
my friend, informing me of her mother's death in England, on June llth,
soon after 5 a.m. My friend and I calculated the difference of longitude,
and the hours corresponded to within a few minutes. I had no idea of
the lady's being ill, and had neither been anxious about her nor thinking
about her. In conversation with the family, two years later, they told me
that a few minutes before her death she said, ' Tell Marcus I thought of
him.' I may mention that this lady had, three years before, nursed me
through a dangerous illness ; and I had a warm affection for her.

" I do not recollect on any other occasion in my life experiencing
the continuation of a dream-image into waking moments ; nor have I ever
had a hallucination either of sight or hearing.

"MARCUS SOUTHWELL GRIFFIN."

Mr. Griffin kindly allowed me to copy the following sentence from the
letter which announced the death : —

" Alphington.

"June 17, 1882.

" Mother died on St. Barnabas' Day [i.e., June 11], at 5.20, and was
buried on the Thursday following, June 15th, 1882."

We have verified the date of death in the Register of Deaths.

The next letter that Mr. Griffin received made it quite clear that the
5.20 was A.M. ; and in conversation with the family since, the death was
described to him as having taken place before breakfast.

[Mr. Griffin has now no separate recollection of the date of his vision.
He had an idea that the death had been on June 1 5, not having looked for
some time at the letter in which it was announced, where it will be seen
that June 15 (the day of the funeral) is the only day of the month
mentioned, the day of the death being otherwise described. The
"June 11 " in the foregoing account was added after he had referred to
this letter. But there can, I think, be no reasonable doubt that he is
justified in his conviction that his vision took place on June 11. He can
hardly be wrong in his recollection that he and his friend made a careful
computation of the longitude, with a view to ascertaining how close the
coincidence was ; and that they specially noticed a slight discrepancy.
(The difference of longitude being about 73^°, the time of the death would
correspond with about 12.30 a.m., not 12.10 a.m. ; so that if the two times
are quite accurately given, Mr. Griffin's experience preceded the death by
about 20 minutes.) Now persons who took this amount of trouble with regard

] See Vol. i., pp. 462 (note) and 551 ; and compare case 698, above.

IN THEIR PROPER PLACES. 705

to the hours, may fairly be assumed not to have made a gross blunder
as to the identity of day ; even if Mr. Griffin is mistaken (which
there is no reason for supposing) in his recollection that the means for
establishing the identity of day were there in black and white before
them. It is to be hoped that the diary has been preserved, and that
the evidence will in time be completed by our obtaining the entry.
The friend who made it is at present in America, and Mr. Griffin has
written to him, but doubts whether the last address given will now
find him. He is sure, he thinks, to have news of him before very long. I
may mention that Mr. Griffin's mother told me that her son gave her a full
description of the occurrence on his return to England, not very long after
it took place.]

I naturally cannot convey to others the full effect of Mr. Griffin's
viva voce description. Though he had not attributed any scientific
importance to the incident, he impressed on me that his own
experience, taken alone, and quite apart from the facts which
he learnt afterwards, was to him absolutely unique — by far the
strangest and most perplexing thing that had ever happened to him.
It gave him precisely the same vivid feeling of astonishment that the
sanest of my readers would receive if they looked up from this page,
and saw a friend standing palpably before them, who gazed at them,
addressed them, and then vanished into air. As regards the coinci-
dence, Mr. Griffin will allow me to add that the view expressed in
his first account — namely, that his own illness was a sufficient
explanation of his experience, and that the coincidence therefore was
accidental — is not that which he now holds. I pointed out to him
(as so often in the course of these pages) that the theory of accident
which would be the reasonable one if the particular experience
in question stood alone or nearly alone in our generation, becomes
unreasonable when the case is only one of a large class ; and I can
only hope that others may agree with him in finding this argument
as just as it is obvious.

Here I must stop. Cases continue to reach us which may claim a
place in a future collection ; but time is needed for inquiry into their
details ; and the limits of space proposed for the present work have
already been overpassed. To those whom it may have interested, its
last word must be a reminder that to them we look for vigorous aid
in the accumulation of further facts, which may confirm or modify our *
conclusions.

VOL. n. 2 z

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

IN COLUMN IV.

Auditory.

Dream.

Emotional.

Gustatory.

Ideational.

M =

O =

S =

T =

V =

IN COLUMN V.

Motor.

Olfactory.

Sensation of pain, &c.

Tactile.

Visual.

H = Husband.

F = Father.

5 = Son.

B = Brother.

U = Uncle.

N = Nephew.

C = Cousin (male).

6 = Grandfather or Grandson.

FR = Friends.1 §T =

AC = Acquaintances.1

In column V., the first letter indicates the percipient, the second the agent,
indicating females are in small type.

The large majority of the names, of which only the initials are here given, appear in
full at the pages indicated.

Wife.

Mother.

Daughter.

Sister.

Aunt.

Niece.

Cousin (female).

Grandmother or Granddaughter.

Strangers.

Letters

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
I.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OF
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OF P. TO A.

1

88

Blind Man — Dr. E

Hypnotic

AC

2
8

89
90

Miss C. — Rev. J. L. S
Patient — Mr. B

sleep
M
M

aC
aC

4
5
6

7
8

90
90
91
93
94

Mr. N. D. — Mesmerist
Mrs. T. — Mr. H. S. T
Miss L. F. C. — Mr. H. S. T
Miss V. — Mr. S. H. B
E. C. — Rev. L. L

M
M

M
M
I

AC
f R
cC
f R
aC

9
10
11
12
13

14

15
16
17

18
19
20

96
98
98
99
103

104

106
108
•188
190
191
194

Mrs. W. — Mr. G. A. S
Friends — Mr. H. S. T
Girl — Son of Rev. L. L
Friends — Mr. H. S. T
Rev. W. S. M. — Friend
MissL. S. V.\ Mr <5 TT R
Miss E. C. V.)- Mn S' H" B
Mrs. L. — Mr. S. H. B
Miss V. — Mr. S. H. B
Mrs. A. S. — Mr. A. S
Mrs. N. — Rev. P. H. N
Rev. J. D. — Miss J. W
Mrs. B. — Mrs. G

lorV
S
I
I
VA

V

VT
VT

S
0

I

lor V

aC
FFR
aC
FFR
Fr

ffR

aC

f R
wH
wH
Fr

d m

21

196

Mr. K. — Mrs. K

I

Hw

99,

197

Miss M. — Mrs. K

E

c c

23
24

199
202

Mr. F. W. — Mr. R. W. B
Mrs. W. — Sir J. C

D
D

BB
d F

1 It has not been possible to draw the line between acquaintance and friendship with
precision. The percipient and agent have been classed as friends in cases where the
account indicates some strength of attachment on both sides or on one side. Where there
is no clear sign of such attachment, the more general designation of acquaintance* has
been adopted.

VOL. ii. 2 z 2

708

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
i.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OF
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OP P. TO A.

?5

204

Mrs. C. — Mr. J. C.

V

m S

26
?7

207
209

Mr. G. M. — Mr. R. K
Mr. R. R. — Mr. X.

V
lor V

CC

FR

«>8

210

Mr. N. J. S. — Mr. F. L

V

FR

99

212

Mr. A. B. — Mrs. F

V

Ac

30

214

F. R. — Mrs. A. (?)

A V

st

31

216

Capt. J. C. — Mr. J

V

N U

3?

218

Rev. R. B. — Mrs. B

V

Sm

33

221

Miss S. — Capt. J. B

A

f R

34

222

Mr. A. Z. — Mr. S. B

A

FR

35
36

37

225

227
234

Mrs. N. — Rev. P. H. N
Mr. J. D.\ M v
Miss R. s.)-Mrs-K
Col. L. A. — Sir L. G

AT. D
A
I

f R

Ff r
FR

38

235

Mr. K. — HerrS

I

FR

39

236

Miss B. —Mrs. B

I

dm

40

236

Count G. — Mr. R. B

I

ST

41

42

43

237
239

240

Miss C. B. M. —Jeweller
Miss C. E. S. — Mr. W. B. S

S'j Miss

E
I
/E

8 T

sB (?)

S S

44
45

242
243

Mrs. LL. H. 1} - Miss M" R' or M*- A" F'
Mrs. H. D. — Mr. C

\E
I
I

S S

Ff Rr
aC

46

47

244
245

Miss A. S. J. — Miss M. L. J.
Mr M. Miss J ...

I
I

S S

Cc

48
49

246
247

Miss A. O. — Mr. D. A.
Mrs. A. — Rev. A. W. A.

I
I A

cC
wH

50

247

Bishop W. — Son

I

FS

51

249

Mrs. S. — Mr. T. W. S.

I

wH

59,

249

Mme. O. — Mons. O. ...

I

wH

53

251

Mrs. G. —Mr. G

lor V

mS

54
55
56

57

253

253
255
256

Miss M. E. P. — Mr. J.
Mr. R. C. — Mr. J. C.
Mr. J. G. K. — Mother-in-law
Miss M. E. P. — Sister

I
I
lorV
I

fR
BB
Fr

8 S

58
59

257
258

Mr. J. H. — Mrs. H. or Miss H
Miss G. — Mr. H. G

lorV
I or V

S m or B s
sB

60

260

Mrs. J. — Mr. W. R

lor V

sB

61

6?

261

262

Mr. J. A. W. — Mr. T. W. or Mr. G. W. ...
Mrs. L. — Mr. A.

lorV
lor V

BB
f R

63

263

Mrs. B. — Friend

I or V

f R

64

264

Lady L. — Sir B. L

lor V

wH

65

265

Miss L. Mr.

lor V

f R

66
67

267
271

"F.R.C. P. " — Landlord
Mr. A. C. — Sister

lorV
E

AC
Bs

68

271

Hon. Mrs. P. — Sister ...

E

s s

69

70

272
273

f— Brother"!
Mr. J. D. H. J. -Uncle
I — Mother J
Mrs. R. —Mr. S. R

E
E

fBB
JNU
(Sm
wH

71

7?

274
275

Dr. E. L. F. — Grandmother
Mrs. B. — Rev. J. J

E
E

G£
dF

73

276

Mr. Mrs -

E

H w

74

277

Mrs. S. —Mr. S.

E

wH

75

278

Dr. J. D. — Father

E D

SF

76

77

280
281

Rev. J. M. W. —Twin brother
Mr. J. C. — Twin brother

E
E

BB
BB

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

709

NO.

AGE.

VOL.

I.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OF
MPRKSSION

RELATIONSHIP
OF P. TO A.

78

283

Mr. A. J. M. — Twin brother

E

BB

79
80

283

284

Rev. E. D. M. — Father
Mrs. C. — Mr. C. .

M
M

SF
w H

81

285

Mr. A. S. — Mrs. S

M

H w

891

286

Mrs. W. — Father

M

dF

83

287

Mr. P. — Father... .

M

SF

84

288

Mrs. V. —Mr. V

M

wH

85

288

Major K. — Father

M

SF

86

87

291
293

Mr. R. R. — Rev. T.H
Mdlle. B. — Mdlle. M

M
M

FR

f r

88
89
90
91

314
315
315
316

Mr. E. P. T. — Mrs. T
Rev. J. P. H. — Mrs. H
Mr. J. M. F. —Mrs. F
Mr. M. — Mrs. M

D
D
D
D

H w or w H
Hw
H w or w H
H w

92

316

Mr. W. — Mrs. W

D

H w

93

317

Mrs. C. —Mr. C.

D

wH

94
95

318
321

Miss C. S. B. - Miss K. E
Mr. C. —Mrs. C.

D(?)
D

f r
H w

96

322

Mr. C. —Mrs. C

D

Hw

97

322

M. H. — MissM. M

D

f r

98

324

Mr. D. B. W. S. — Father

D

SF

99
100

325
327

Mr. T. J. H. — Mrs. W
Mr. J. A. — Lieut. O

D
DI

Fr
FR

101

328

Mrs. M. — Mr. M. ?

D

w H (?)

102

329

Mrs. L. —Mr. J. C

D

f R

103
104
105

330
331
333

Coriolanus — Mr. E. C. B
Miss E. J. M. — Rev. A. B. M
Mrs. H. — Mr. H. H.

D
D
D

FR

cC
mS

106

335

Mrs. S. — Son

D

mS

107

336

Mr. A. A. — Son

D

FS

108
109

338
339

Rev. Canon W. — Mr. A. W
Mrs. F. — Mr. F.

D
D

BB
wH

110

339

Mrs. C. L. — Mother

D

d m

111

342

Miss B. — Navvy

D

f R

112

342

Mr. G. G. — Mrs. S

D

Ac

113

343

Mrs. G. — Son .

D

mS

114
115

345
346

Rev. W. D. W. R. — W. E
Mrs. F. —Mr. C. F.

D
D

FR

m S

116
117
118

347
349
350
350

Mrs. S. — Mrs. C. R. S
Herr von R. — Capt. von P
Miss L. K. D. — Friend
Miss K. G. — Mr. M.

D
D
D
D

f r
AC
f R
aC

120
121

352
353

Mrs. J. — Mr. G. J. H
Mr. E. J. H. — Father

D
D

f R
SF

100

355

Mrs. F. — Mr. F.

D

wH

123

355

Mrs. F. — Mr. F. E. F

D

mS

124
125
126

357
358
359

362

Miss C. A. — Mr. L. (?)
Mr. J. W. — Mrs. W
Mrs. H. B. — Colonel F
Mrs.M. |_Mrs A

D
D
D

-P

a C
Sm
aC

ffr

128
129

10A

363
364

OCR

Miss V. /
Brigade Surgeon W. — Mother
Rev. C. C. W. — Mr. W.
Mrs M — Mr W

\5

D
D
D

S m •
FR
sB

101

'111!

Mrs H — Mr. J. M

D

sT

100

366

Mrs H Mr. J. G

D

aC

1 Q3

••c,'

Miss R H B

D

»

134.

370

Mrs. S. — Mr. H.

D

sB

710

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

NO

PAGE

VOL
I.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE O
IMPEESSIO

RELATIONSHIP
OP P. TO A.

135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143

144

145
146
147

148
149
150
151

152
153
154
L55
56
[57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65

66

67
68

69

70
71

72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89

373
374
375
375

377
378
380
381
383

383

386
395
397
399
400
403
404
406
407
408
409
410
411
413
414
415
416
416
417
418
419

420

424
425

427

428
429
430
431
431
433
434
435
436
437
439
440
441
443
444
445
447
448
449
451

Miss P. — Mr. J. T. M. P

D
D

D
D
D
D
D
D
D
/AD

\ D
D
V
M
M
D(?)
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
/DV

\ v

V
V

/v

(l

V
V
V
V
D V
TV
VT
VT
T V
T V
T A
A V
VA
A V
TVA
VA
VA
VA
AV

sB
fR

f r
a n
aC
sB
fr
AC
nU
FR
sB
mS
FR
mS
Gg
Fd
BB
sB
m S
Fr
f R
S m
SF
Sm
f r
FR
Bs
cC
A C
FR
FR
f R
w H
sT
BB
f R
sT
FR
n a
aN
fr
f R
aC
FR
wH
sB
dF
FR
Na
mS
fr
wH
FS
sB

1?

mS

f r

Mrs. M. M. — Major P.
Mrs. M. M. — Friend

Mrs. G. — Miss A

Miss S. S. P. — W. T

Miss L. A. W. — Brother
Mrs. H. — Sister-in-law
Dr. Y. — Tenants

Mrs. M. — Dr. H.

Dr. B. ) „

TV/T o i- — Mr.

Mrs. S. /
Mrs.V. S. — Son

LordB. — G

Mrs. K. — Mr. E. K

Dr. R. — Grandmother
Mr. W. D. — MissD.
Lord L. — Brother

Mrs. P. — Brother

Mrs. R. — Son

Rev. A. J. — Mrs. M. J
MissT. — Mr. H S

Mr. E. — Mrs. E.

Mr. Father

Mr. H. C. F. — Mrs. F.
Mrs. S. — E. M

Archdeacon F. — Friend
Major M. — Miss S. M.
Miss B. — Captain C. M.
Mr.J.A. S. — Dr. M
Rev.W. J. B. — Mr. R. D. ...

Rev.C. C. W. —Mr. B

MS:l}-CaPtaiiiW

Mr. W. de G. — Mr. H. de G
Mrs. T. — Mr. N

Miss T.J. C.\ M
Mr. C.B. }~ **- ~ '
Mrs. S. — Aunt ...

Mrs. R. — Mr. F

Mrs. D. — Miss G.

Mrs. B. — Captain G

MissC. P. —Major G.
Mr. T. R. — Mr. J. H. H
Mrs. W. — Mr. W

Mrs. B. — Brother

Miss E. A. S. — Mr. S.
Mr. W. — Mr. G. B

Mr. G. J. C. — Mrs. R.
Mrs. W. — F. W

Miss K. J. — Miss B

Mrs. R. — General R

Mr. J. G. K. — I. K
Mrs. S. — Mr. S. P

Miss B. — Grandfather
Miss H. — R

Mrs. P. — M. P

Mrs. W. — Mrs. H.

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES,

711

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
I.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OP
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OP P. TO A.

190

453

Mrs. L. — Mrs. R.

A V

f r

191
192

523
524

Mr. T. W. G. — Mrs.
Mr. B. — Mrs. R

V
V

Fr
Ac

193
194
195

525
527

528

Canon Mr.
Miss R. — Captain W.
Miss R. — Mrs. M.

V
V
V

FR
f R

196

530

Mr. J. G. F. R. — Mrs.

v

N a

197

531

MissB. — J. N.

V A

f R

198

532

Mrs. S. — B

AV

f R

199

534

Mr. B. — Friend

A V

Fr

200

540

Miss C. — Mr. T. C

v

sB

201

542

Mrs. B. — R

V

f R

202

544

Miss S. — Mrs. A.

v

f r

203

548

Mrs. A. — Mrs. C

v

d m

204

549

Mrs. C. — Mrs.

V

f r

205

549

Lady C. — Father H

v

f R

206

551

Colonel J. — Miss J.

v

Bs

207

552

Mrs. L. — A. C.

A V

f r

208
2101
211
212

553
556
559
560

Mrs. R. — Mr. E. R. ...
Captain C. — Lieut. O. C
Miss L. — Great Uncle
Dr. B. — Mr. J. M

A
V
V
V

wH
BB
nU2
BB

213

561

Mr. J. H. — Mrs. P

V

Ac

214

563

Mrs. J.— Mrs. R

V

a n

215

566

Mr. J. R. — Mrs. W

v

Fr

216

567

Mrs. P. — Brother

V

sB

217

218
219

568

VOL.
II.

30
31

Mr. T. C. — Rev. J. C

Mr. H. H. H. — Great Uncle
Mr. A. — Mrs. A.

V

lorV
V

SF

NU*
H w

220

221

31
34

Mr. F. G. — Mr. C. T.
Lady C. — Mrs. L

V

v

FR

d ni

222

35

Mr. R. S. — Mrs. S

V

H w

223

37

Mrs. T. —Mr. W

V

n U

224
225

38
40

Mdme. B. — Mons. d'E
Mrs. R. — Miss L. B

V
V

f R
a c

226

41

General H. — MissH. ...

V

Bs

227

42

M. — Friend

v

Fr

228

44

Rev. F. B. — Aunt

V

Na

229

45

General F. — Friend ... ...

v

FR

230
231
232
233

46
47
49
50

Mr. J. E. — Twin brother
Mr. S. S. — Hon. R. G
Miss E. H. H. — Mrs. W
Mrs. G. — Brother

V
V
V

v

BB
FR
f r
sB

234

51

Mrs. S. — Mr. H. S

v

m S

235
236

51

52

Col. S. — Lieut. J. D. S
Miss B. — Mr. W. B

V

v

BB
sB

237

54

E. M. G. — Friend

v

f r

238

55

Mrs. D. — D. D

v

w H

239

57

J. M. —Mr. W

v

FR *

240

59

Mrs. E. - Mr. J. S

v

f R

941

59

Mr. S. J. M. — Friend ..

V

Fr

1 The number 209 has been accidentally omitted.
2 Great Uncle.

712

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

VOL.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OF
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OF P. TO A.

61
63
66
67

68
69
70
71

72
74
75
76
78
78
80
81
82
82
82

Nurse — Mr. J.B
Chevalier S. F. — Mr. C. F
Major O. — Mr. J. E. H
Rev. W. E. D. — Friend
Mr. A. I. — Mr. E. P
Mrs. -- Son
Mr. A. L. — Professor C
Mr. T. H. C. — Mr. X.
Mr. R. S. — M. M
Mrs. W. — F. W
Rev. J. W. — Pupil
Mr. S. M. S. — Nurse S
Miss D. \ M H
Mrs. M. / — Mrs- u
Caroline — Mrs. H
Mr. E. H. — Mrs. H
Mrs. W. — Rev. T. L. W
Miss W. — Rev. T. L. W
Parishioner — Rev. T. L. W

V

EV
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V

V
V
V
V
V

83 Four Friends — Miss H .......... y

v

85 Sister-in-law — Mrs. S. ......... V

85 Miss J. S. — Mrs. S ....... , ..... V

85 Mrs. S.— Mrs. S ............. V

r86 Mrs. C. — Mr. B ............. I

88 MissS. — Mr. B ............. TVA

88 Mrs. G. — Mr. B. V

I89

190 Mrs. G. — Mr. B ............. V

91 Capt. B. — Mrs. B ............. V

92 Capt. B. — Mrs. B ............. V

E.B. — Mrs. B ................ V

93 Mrs. B.— Mrs. G ............. V

94 Col. B.— Col. R ............. V

96 J. C. — Twin Brother ............ V

Rev. W. M.

97 £5 CQ — Mr. R. C. or Mrs. R. C. ... V

Miss

100 Mr. J. S. — Mr. D. S ............. A

100 Mrs. R. — Mr. S. R ............. A

102 Mrs. S. — Mr. S. ... ......... A

103 Mr. R. F. — Mr. J. T. F .......... A

104 Dr. -- Brother ............ A

105 Miss G -- Sister ............ A

105 Servant — Mr. J. P ............. A

107 Mr. L. T. — Son ............... A

108 Mr. G. A. W. — Brother ......... A

109 Mrs. S. — Mr. S ............. A

110 Mr. W. T. B. — Mr. B .......... A

111 Mrs. H. — Mr. H ............. A

112 MissB. — Mrs. B ............. A

113 Mrs. W. — Sister ............ A

114 Mrs. W. — Mother, and (?) other relatives... A

115 Mr. G.— Miss - .. A

sT
BB
CC
FR
FR
mS
AC
FR
Ac
m d
FR
Fr

C C C

a c
Sm
wH
dF
fR
a c
Fr
fr
a c
f r
n a
f r
f R
f R
f R

FfR

f R
H w
Fr

a c

f r
FR
BB

BB
mS
mS
BB
BB

s s

aC

FS

BB

mS

SF

wH

d m

s s
d m

Fr

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

713

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
n.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OF
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OP P. TO A.

•>81

116

Mrs. W. — Cousin

A

cC

?8<>

116

Mrs. W. — E

A

f r

283

117

Miss H. — Mrs. H

AD

d m

284
285

119
120

Rev. R. H. K.— "Etta"
Count G. — Mr. V

I or A
I or A

Fd
S T

286

122

Rev. Friend

S I

F R

*>87

123

Dr. J. S. — J. G. (?) ' ...

A

AC

988

124

Mr. B. —Mrs. B

A

S m

289

127

Mr. Friend

E A

F r

*>%

130

Miss V. — Mrs. D

A

f r

291

•>(!•>

132
104.

Mrs. Mr. J

S
T

mS

n TT

293

135

J. G. —Mrs. G.

T A

S m

294
295
296
297

136
137
139
141

Rev. P. H. N. — W. B
Mrs. R. L. — Mr. R. L
Rev. J. A. H. — Mrs. P
Miss P. — Mr. M. P

TA
AT V
A V
V A

FR
f R
Fr
sB

*>98

143

Mrs. B. — Friend

A V

f R

299
300

144
146

D. B. — W. H. P. (?)
E. S. — Father

VA
V A

FR
SF

301
302

303
304

147
149

154

156

Mr. H. O. — Miss K. A. O.
Mr. H. B. G.\ ~ T R
and others I" Eev" T" H
Mr. J. H. W. — Mrs. W
Miss M. — Mr. J. T. M. P

VA
/V,A
I A
D. D (?)

V. (?V)

Bs
FR

sssT
Gg
f R

305

158

Miss - — Mr. V.

D D

f R

306

159

Miss B Mrs. S. ...

VT A. D

f r

SO?

162

Mrs. P.— Mr. L

V. I

aC

308
309

164
173

Mrs. S. \ Mr 17 W

Mrs. R.j— Mr-E> W
Mrs.B.|_

(A}.lMy
/E

/s B
\fR

st

310
311
312

174
176
178

M. W. /

Rev. C. C. T. F.\ nor,toiT, n
Major C. j- Captain C

Mrs. E. \ Mr TJ
Captain B. )~ Mr' B'
Mrs.P |_Mrs G

ID

/A

\A
/V

u

/v

s t
FR
FR
sT
SF
f r

313

314

315
?lfi

179

181

182
193

Servant /

Mrs*M.}-Susan-
Mrs. C. 1
Mrs. B. V— Mrs. W
Mrs. J

SEA0-}-—**

Mrs. W. \

\v

/ E

XAVT

fv

1V
lv

/ v

\V(?D)
/V

a c
Ac
f r
fr
an

S 8

Bs

8 S
?

?17

196

Mr. E. M. W.J •
MissV. M.)
MissS. M. \

\v

fV

Jv

?

SI 8

198

C. J
Lord C. \

lv
/v

1

S19

199

Lady C. /
Rev. \

\v
fv

?

VO

200

Dr. C. ]
Surgeon-Major S. \

vy

riv

?

S*>1

202

Mrs. R. /
Rev. D. W. G.\

\I V

rv

t

Mrs. G. /

\v

714

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

NO

PAG

VOL
n.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE O
IMPBESSIO

RELATIONSHII
OF P. TO A.

322

203

Lady C.)

(I

V

323

204

Miss T. /
Mr. B.I
Mrs. B. \

\A
fv

^v

?

324

205

Miss B. I
Mrs. B. ^

(V

rsV(?)

V

325

208

bister J
Capt. N. \

I v

/v

\ IT

9

326

209

Mr. J. A./
MrJ8' ?• 1 Rev W

IV

/v

ddF

327

328
329
330

210
210
211
213

and others/ OT
Mrs. M.\ M .
Friend /
Mrs. H. 1 ,,. TT ...
MissM. H.) -MissH. (?)

Mr. M. 1 T, n, TT ,„.
Mr. R. } -Rev. Mr. H. (?)

Mr. J. C.\

\v

{^}
(^
W

/v

1 v

AC
ffR

m d

s s

FFR

t

331

213

bon J
Mr. L. \

IV

lv

1 V

•>

332

215

and others / '"
Rev. C. J.)

IV

/v

1 T~* /9\

?

333

217

Clula 1
Mrs. H. }

Mr H L ~Mra TT l")\

I1-* (•)
fV

334

218

and others J
Miss G. 1

JV

lv
/A

?

335

219

Mrs. S. \

U

/A

336

220

Two servants/
Rev. W. R. )

\A
/A

9

337

221

Mr. S. 1
Mrs. S. I

IA
fA

J A

9

338

223

and others 1
Mrs Y. \

IA

/A

339
340

226

227

Mrs. K. I
Mr. B. )
Mrs. B. V— MissS
and others I
Mr. L. \ w T

M™, T f — W. L.

IA

1^1

k1

FFFffr
FS

341
342
343

227

228
230

Mrs. A. 1 /-,
The Misses A/~ Commander A
Mr. W. \ _. , T .
Mrs. W. /- D- M- A
Mrs. P. \ A _.
ivrioc, T> ^ — A. D.

\A

/A
\A

IA

(A
IA1

mS
mS
sss B
FR
sB

flfR

344
345

234
235

Miss L. ^l .
Miss J. L. /- Aunt
Child — Mr.

\Af

f

n n a
S F

VIrs. C. — Mr.

VA

<» R

346
347

36
37

Mr. T. D. }
Mrs. T. D. 1— Mrs. D
?riend J
Mrs. R. - Mr. ...

VT
V
V

v

Sm
f r
Fr
n TT

Mrs. A. — Mr.

v

s R

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

715

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
II.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OF
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OF P. TO A.

348

239

Mrs. E.\ M

nr

f R

Miss D. /

1 V

sT

349

241

Mr.W. \ p w

iv

FS

Miss K. W. /

XV

8 B

350

244

JJd2 often,}- Mre- R-

{v

st
ffr

351

247

MUiBj-M'-P-M-

{v}

aaC

QUO

• ) 1 O

A. F. \ -p -rf

/VD

GG

KKE

24o

Mr. S. S F.J v'

\v

SF

353

OKA

Mrs. --\ M

/v

sT

fivU

•«* /• A.TJ.1 • ... *** ...

1 V

B B

iTir. j

I. •

354

253

Miss D. E. W. \ M.a M c

Miss L. C. J

\v

n a
ac

355

256

Captain A. |_MH

|AV

ST

Mr. H. /

I. A

S F

356

257

Mr-g- J-MP.W.

/v\

FFR

Mr. E./

\ * )

357

259

Sir J. S. \ nrr j W

Colonel W./~

\v

ST
BB

CASES IN THE SUPPLEMENT.

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
ii.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OF
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OF P. TO A.

358
359

325
326

A. M. — Rev. C. H. T.
Mrs. S. — Dr. E.

TS
GT O

aC
aC

360

328

Boy — Professor J. S. ...

G

AC

361

329

A. D. — Mons. M.

S

FR

362
363
364

332
333
334

Patient — Mons. C. R.
Patient — Professor B. ...
Patient — Dr. G.

M
I
I E

aC
AC
aC

365

334

Patient — Dr. G.

I

aC

366

.336

Miss M. N. — Mrs. P

I GT E

f r

367
368

344
346

Mrs. J. E. — Captain B
Patient — Dr. P.

ITOG
I

f R
f R

369
370

347
349

Miss C. — Serjeant C. and others
Mrs. M. — Mrs. ...

I
I

s B, &c.
f r

371

350

Mr. C. — Coachman

I (?)

F R

372
373

350
351

Rev. J. B. — Rev. J. S. B
Mr. - Dr.

I

FS
F R

374

353

Mr. H.— Father

I

S F

375
376
377

07C

354
354
356

9fU?

Miss B. — Madame H.
Professor W. — Mr. R. W
Mrs. C. — G. C. or Brother —
Mr J W S Mra

I
I
I

Fr
BB

m S

Fr

379

358

Mrs. Dr. S

I

f R

380

360

Rev. Mr. B. — Brother

lorV

BB

716

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
II.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OF
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OF P. TO A.

381

360

Miss C. — Mrs.

E

S S

382

361

j

Frl <W

OQQ

QfiO

T

384

363

Mrs. G. — Mr. G.

I

mS

385
386

364
364

Mrs. W. — Insane patient (?)
Mr. J. C. Mr.

I
I

sT
A C

387

368

Mr. J. A. E. — ?

IE

?

388

369

Mr. N. C. — ?

I E

9

389

370

Rev. Son

E

F S

390

371

Mr. J. P. — Mr. B

I

FR

391

371

Mr Mr C.

E

F R

009

070

•n TT n TT

393

373

Mrs. Sons

E

f R

m S m S

394
395

374
374

Mr. F. H. P. — Mrs. P
Mrs. D Ada

E
E

Sm
f r

QQ«

97 K

Mr S N W Mr

F-R

397

376

Mr. F. M. —Mrs. M

M

Sm

398
399

377
377

Dr. E. L. F. — Patient
Mr. W. B. — Son

M
M

Ac

FS

400
401

378
379

Herr von S. — Frau von S

Mr. N.— Miss N

M
M

Sm
Fd

402
403

380
380

Mr. A. A. W. — Mrs. W.
Mr. F. — Mrs. F

D
D

Sm
H w

404
405

406

381
382

382

2S ft™}-*.*- ... -

£tLM'}-M-M
Mr. S. 1
Mr. W. S. \— Mrs. S

PPPPPC

A ac

SSm

S S Sm

407

383

Mr. J. S. 1
Miss J. W. — M. H

(y

f r

408

385

Mrs. H.— Miss H

D

m d

409

385

Mrs. S. — Mr. S

D

m S

410
411

386

387

Servant — Mr. E. C. T
Miss A. G. — Mr. G

D
D

aC
sB

412
413

387
388

Mrs. O'S. — Hon. J. L. O'S
General B. — Mrs. B

D
D

mS
H w

414

388

Mrs. B. — Servant

D

f r

415
416

389
390

Miss A. J. M. — Mr. M.
Mrs. B. - Mr. J. B

D
D

sB

mS

417
418

391
392

Dean C. - Rev. E. T. C
Mr. A. S. — Mr. S. S

D
D

BB
BB

419

393

Mrs. Mr

D

m S

420
421
422
49,3

393
394
395
396

Rev. W. B. B. — Mrs. B
Miss C. D. G. — Mrs. G.
Colonel V. — Mr. A. V.
Mrs. S. - Frau S.

D
D
D
D

Fr

-T O

f r

4?4

396

Mrs. W. Mr.

D

sB

49,5

397

Mrs. D. — Mrs W

D

f r

4?6

398

Miss C. — Mr. . .

D

f R

49?

399

Miss G. — Rev.

D

aC

498

400

Mrs. H. —Mr. J. J

D

aC

499

400

Mr. P.M. — Mr. M

D

SF

430
431

400
402

Rev. F. R. H. — Mr.
Miss D. - Rev. S

D
D

CC
sT

432

403

Mrs B Professor T

a TJ

433

404

Mr. F. T. D. — Mr.

D

NU

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

717

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
n.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OP
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OK P. TO A.

434
435
436

404
405
406

Mr. H. W. D. - Mrs. D.
Mr. G. U. — Mr. R. U
Mrs. T. — ?

D
D
D

Sm
BB

V

437

406

Mrs. H. — Mr. J. M

D

nU

438

407

Mrs. D. - Mr.-

D

sB

439
440

408
408

MODS. J. C. — Mons. H. C
Mons. L. — Mons. L.

D
D

BB

SF

441
442
443
444
445
446

408
409
411
412
412
413

Mr. A. G. S. — Mr. D. L
Mrs. S. — Rev. S. H. S
Mr. J. D. B. — Mrs.
Mr. H. — Lieut. A. E. H
Rev. J. M. — Mrs.
Mrs. P. — Miss

D
D
D
D
D(?)
D

FR
wH

Gg

TP Q
Fr

88?

447
448
449
450
451
459!

414
415
416

417
418
419

Fraulein M. L. — Herr L.
Mr. W. B. —Mr. J. B
Mme. A. — Dr. A. F. S
Miss A. E. R. —Mr. X.
Rev. G. L. F. —Dr. H. H. F
Mr. T. — Mrs. T.

D
D
D(?)
D
D
D

dF
BB
f R
f R
BB
Sm

453

420

Miss Mr

D

n U

454

421

Mr Major

D

S F

455

422

Mr. G. H. F. P. — Miss E. B.

D

Ac

456

457

423
423

Miss M. — K. A. H. (?)
Mrs Mrs M

D
D

st
f r

458

424

Mrs. W. — Mr. W. G

D

nU

459

425

Miss E. F. H. — (?)

D

9

460

461
46?,

427

428
429

Mrs. B. — Mr. B. C. and others

Mrs. F. — Mr. W. H. or Miss H
Mr. J. R. — Mr. J. M

D

D
D

c C, f R,
f r, w H
f R or f r
FR

463
464

430
431

Miss A. G. — Mrs.
Miss B. Mr.

D
D

f r
f R

465

431

Mr. J. W. B. — Dr. B

D

SF

466

432

Mrs. F. — Mrs. L

D

m d

467

468

432
433

Mme. S. (hypnotised) — Father
Mr. R. — J. R. T.

D
D

dF

U N

469

434

E.G. —Woman

D

a c

470

435

Miss M. — Mr. M.

D

dF

471

436

Mrs. S. — W. S.

D

mS

472

437

Mrs. W. — Mr. G. E

D

sB

473

438

Mrs. Mrs. W

D

f r

474

439

Mdlle. R. — Mme. R.

D

d m

475

440

Mrs. H. — Mme. ...

D

d m

476

441

Mrs. D. S. - Mr. T. P

D

dF

477'

442

Miss M. — Capt. F

D

f R

478
479

443
443

Mr. L. H. S. — Mr. H. S. (?)
Mr. R. R. — E. G

D
D

BB(?)
AC

480

444

Mr. R. R. — W. T.

D

AC

481

444

Mr. C. — Rev. S. H. I

D

FR

48?,

445

Mrs. P.— Mrs. B

D

n a

483

484

446
447

Mr. E. W. P. — Clerk (?)
Miss Mrs. G,

D
D

ST(?)
s t

A OK

i IM

Mr Tf TT T> Miaa

V

F r

486

450

Mrs. L. — M. T.

V

c c

487

451

Mrs. H. —Mr. A

V

• B

488

452

Mr. W. G. — Mr. G

V

BB

489

453

Mrs. N. — Capt. N

VA

f R

490

454 >

Ladv C. Mr. J. D.

VA

sT

718

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
ii.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OP
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OP P. TO A.

491

455

Mrs. C. — Mr. R

V

dF

492

456

Mrs. G. G. — Col. S

V

d F

493

457

Mr F Mr. F. F

v

F S

494

458

T. P. Mrs. P

v

S m

495

459

Mr. G W. — Mrs. B

V A

N a 1

496
497

459
460

Mr. G. W. — Miss M.
Mrs. F — Mrs.

A
A

Fr

s s

498
499
500

460
461
462

Miss E. B. — Mr. H. A. D
Rev. W. B. L. — Mr. L
Mrs Mr

VA
V

v

f R
SF
w H

501

463

Mrs B Miss G. B

V

f r

502
503

464
467

Mrs. W. — Mother and others
Mrs D Mr.

V,D,A
V

d m, s s, s s
s B

504
505
506

468
469
470

Mons. M. — Mons. M., Mme. M
Miss H. W. — Maurice
Miss L Mr.

T A V
V
A

SF, Sm

aN
sT

507

508

471
473

Mr. F. A. S. — Mrs. R
Mrs H Mrs.

A
T A

Cc

509

473

Mrs S — Mrs. G

A V

d m

510
511

474
475

Rev. S. M. — Archbishop of T
Hcrr A Frau

V A

v

FR

N a

512
513
514

475
476

477

Mrs. J. B. — Mr. R. M
E. H. — J. S. and others
Mrs. S. — Miss A. H .-.

VT

AVT,&c.

v

f R
f f R, s B,
\s B, na, n U
f r

515

477

Mrs. S. —Mrs. G

v

s s

516

479

Miss E. C. — Mrs. C

v

d m

517

480

Lady R. — Hon. J. V

v

cC

518

481

Mme C. — Mons. R.

V A

f R

Mme. V. — Mons. G.

A

dF

519

482

Mrs. F. — Mrs. M

V A

s s

520

482

Dr C. — Mrs. C.

V A

S m

521

483

Mrs. C. — Mr. J. C

v

m S

522

485

Rev J. C. — Mrs. B

V A

Fr

523

486

Mr. B. — Mr.

v

AC

524

486

Miss S. —Sir L. S

V

dF

525

488

Mrs. B. — Miss B. B

v

m d

526

488

Commander C. — J. F. J.
Commander C. — T.

VA
V A

FR
F R

527

490

Mrs. H. — D. H.

V A('D)

mS

528
5W

491
491

Miss M. N. — Lieut. E. M. N
Mrs. N. — J. N

AV
V

sB

m S

530

492

Mr. W. J. — Mr. J

V

S F

531

493

Mrs Mr.

v

aN

532

494

Mr. W. —Mr. W

V

B B

533

494

Mr J. M. — Mr. A. M. .

V T

FR

534

495

Mr. C. — MissC.

V

Bs

535

495

Mr Father

v

S F

536

495

Servant — Farm Lads ...

V

a C

537

496

Lieut. C. — Lieut. L. ...

V

FR

538

497

J. P. —Mrs. P

A

S m

539

498

Hon. R. H. — Mr. L

A V

FR

540

499

Mr. Mr. B

A V

FR

541

501

Mrs. Son ...

lorV

mS

1 Great Aunt.

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

719

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
ii.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OF
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OF P. TO A.

549

502

Mrs. A. — Rev. F. A

V

m S

543

502

Mrs. O. — Mr. O.

V

mS

544

502

S. S. — Mrs. F

V

8 t

545
546

547

503
504
505

Miss H. P. — Hon. J. P
Mr. B. — Mr. C. F. S
J. R. — Mons. G.

V
V
V A

dF
FR
f R

548

506

Mrs. B. — Dr.

lor V

f R

549

507

T. — Mr. J. P

V

AC

550
551

509
510

Mr. J. A. C. — J. H
Farmer — Capt. W

V
V

FR
AC

5591

511

Mrs. R. Mr. -

v

f R

553

511

Mrs. H. — Z.

V

f R

554

512

Mrs. H. — Mrs.

V

m d

555

513

Mrs. P. — Mother

V

d m

556

513

Miss Mrs

v

d m

557

514

Miss M. C. — Mrs. S

V

a c

558
559

515
515

Rev. W. J. — Daughter (?)
Mr. T. H. — Mrs. H

V
V

Fd
S m

560
561

569,

516
516
517
519

Mr. T. H. — Mr. E. H
Rev. H. A. H. — Mrs. B
Rev. H. A. H. — Mr. R
W. S. — Capt. S.

V
V
V
V

BB
Fr
FR
S F

563

520

J. B. — Father

v

d F

564

520

Mrs. P. — Mrs.

v

f r

565

520

G. — Father

V

dF

566

521

Mrs. M. — G

v

cC

567

522

Mrs. A. — Mrs. W.

v

d m

568
569

522
523

Mr. V. T. E. — Mrs. E
A. — Mr. A. J

V
AT V

Sm
F R

570

524

M. V. — Capt. de L

V

f R

T525

Mr. H. W. — Mrs. W

V

Sm

571

526

Mr. H. W. — Mrs. W

E

S m

579,

526

MissH. C. — Mr.

V

f R

573

527

Mrs. B. —Mr. H

V

aC

574
575

528
529

Mr. J. H. J. — Mr.
Mrs. W. — Mrs.

V
V

FR

d m

576

529

Mrs. C.— Mrs. (?)

V

a c

577

530

Dr. C. M. — Mr. M

V

AC

578

531

Lord D. — Mrs. P. C

v

Fd

579

532

Mrs ••• • Mrs • • —

v

580
581

533
533

Lieut. W. C. B. — Mrs. B
MissJ. C. — H. C

V

v

Sm
s B

582
583

534
536

Col. C. — W. C. or J. C
Mrs. M. — Capt. P

V

v

AC
f R

584

585

537

538

General M. — Laundress
Mr. H. — Dr. G.

V

v

Ac
F R

586

538

Mrs. F. General F ,

v

w H

587

539

Mr. J. D. — Mrs. F

v

B s

588

540

Mrs. R. — Mr. D.

v

f R

589

541

Mr. G. — Miss R

v

A c

590

542

Mr Mrs

v

S in

591

543

Bishop E. — Mr. C

v

F R

59*>

543

Rev. G. — Lord K

v

F R

593

544

Mrs. de S. — Sister

v

594

545

Mr Mrs

v

H w

595

545

Child — Frau

v

S m

596

546

Mrs. W. — G. W

v

m S

720

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

NO.

PAGE

VOL
n.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE O
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OF P. TO A.

597

547

J. J. M.

V

FR

598

547

Major H. — Capt. H

V

BB

599

548

Miss M. — Sir J. Y

V

f R

600

549

Officer — Lieut. G.

V

A C

601

550

Mr. M. — H. M

V

FS

60*>

550

Mrs. P. Mr.

V

d F

603

551

Mr. A. — J. A

V

FS

604

552

Mr. J. W. — Mrs. W

V

H w

605

553

General K. — Mrs. K

V

H w

606

553

Mr. J. S. — Mrs. S

V

Hw

607

555

Child — Officer

V

dF

608

556

Mate — Brother ...

V

BB

609

556

Mr. F. L. M. — Mr. S

V

C C

610

557

Maori — -Brother...

V

BB

611

558

Mrs. G. —Son

V

m S

61 9,

558

Mrs. A.— Mrs. G

V

a c

613

561

Mr. M. P. S. — Mr. S

A

FS

614

562

Mrs. R. — G. R

A

m S

615

563

Herr D. — Mr. G. S

A

FR

616

564

MissB. — Dr. H

A

aC

617
618

564
565

Rev. C. C. F. — Mrs. F
Miss S. Mrs.

A
A

Sm
f r

619

620
6*>1

566

567

568

Mrs. M. — Sister and mother

Rev. J. W. — Rev. T. C. E. ...
Mrs. M. Mr.

A

A
A

ss, ss, dm
FR

8 B

R99

570

Mrs. M. Tom

A

f R

69,3

570

Mrs. M. — W. M

A

mS

694

572

Miss C. — Mr. J. ...

A

f R

/573

Miss H. — Nephew

A

aN

625

\573

Miss H. — Nephew

A

aN

R9tf

574

Mr. C. — Mr. C

T

SF

627

R9fl

574
575

' ' Master of Marines '' — Father
Mrs. W. — Mrs. De M

T
VT

SF

s s

699

576

Miss S. W. — Mr. W

T

f R

R30

576

Mr. F. C. — Mrs. C

S

Hw

631

K7C

Colonel M T Miss

V A

F r

RQO

K7Q

V A

Hw

R3S

580

Miss — • Lieut. B.

V A

f R

R34

581

Child — Mother

V A

d m

RS5

582

M. Mrs

A V

d m

636

583

Mme. E. — Mons. E

A V

mS

637

583

MissS. P. — Mrs. W

V A

s s

R38

584

Colonel T. — Mr. J. T

A V

BB

R39

585

Mrs. W. — Mr. W.

A V

wH

<>40

586

Mrs. E. — W. E

V A

wH

i41

590

Miss Rev.

I or V. I

f R

342

r.ni

Mr Misa L \ W

D D

S t

343
i44

593
595

Mrs. A. W. — Major F. M. M.
Mrs. W. — Mr. W.

D. D
D. VT

sT
wH

rv~i

J45
i46

597

KQQ

M£E.— }-Mrs.T.
Mrs. M. — •» M

{y}u

(A\D

S S 8

n a

Mrs /

\ A F

i47

600

5»?y<H Mrs.

ft

d d m

U8

600

Sister /
MissS.j _M j p

\E
/D

cC

Mrs. P. J

ID

m S

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

721

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
II.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATUKE OP
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OF P. TO A.

649
650
651

652

653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660

661
662

663

664
665

666

667
668

669
670
671

602
603
604

605

606
607
609
610
610
611
612
613

613
615

616

617
617

619

622
623

625
626
627

Mrs. P.\ M
•\/r r> f — Mrs. . . .

{'

\
<

{

\

{'

\
{

T
T
V
V
V
V
V

ft
L?

V A
V

rv

IV

rv

IV

rv

IV
\ V
V

rv

IV
D V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V
V

:v

*

V
A
'V
V
V

,v

V
V
V
V
V
V

V

d m
d m
f r
a c
a c
FS
AC
SF
aC
f R
FR
s s

S S

aN
sT
d m
d m
aC
aC

SLG

dT(?)

f r
f r
BB
sB
Ac
Ac
f R
FR
FFf R
m d
s s

15 8

Sm
f r
GGg

ddF

S SF

st
st
St
FR
wH
SF
f R
?

ff

ff R
a a c
Ff f f r

Mrs. C. J
Mrs. H. ]
Nurse >- — Mrs. M.
MissE. H.J
Mr-S. )_Mr T s

W. B. /
C. F. ~\

Nurse n0^ v
•\r T> r — L/apt. r . . . .

Mrs. R.
Capt. R. J
Miss S "k

T V Mrs

Miss J. /
MissR-j M

Servant/
Miss S. \ M c
Miss M. S. / ~~ Mrs' fe<

Mrs. S. \ AT T a
AT • •& f — Mr. J . b. ...

Miss r.)
Mrs. R. \ M

Mrs J

Miss T? 1

M£H. — }~M-S-

FIrIuletnC.}-HerrJ-H-C-
Mr. R. ) T ,
Mr. J. C. R. | - a lady

Colonel W V Capt

and others]

Mary [ — Ellen
John J

Mr. C. 1
Mrs. C. V — Mrs. C
and 2 Children;
Miss W. \ ,, w
Miss-W.j-Mr-W-
Admiral C. ) AT r>
Mr. G. B. C. ) ~Mr- C-
Miss A. S."|
MissE. F. V — Miss S....

Page J
Mr. T. S. ^i

Mrs

Child - Mr' -
Miss S. J
Two Ladies i — Dr. B

Mrs. B.\ M r

Miss rJ. J
Miss A. \ ,, n w

•\yr; T> f — Mr. (jr. tl. ...

Miss r>. J
2 servants — Miss L. ...

Mrs. B. and\ ,,. ,„
3 others ) ~ Ml8s W

1 Described by the agent as " relations " simply.

3 A

722

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES.

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
n.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OF
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OF P. TO A.

672

628

MrT - ""I'- MrS' B' (?>

{v

Bi

f r

Tiir- T7

v

i r

673

629

Mi!s S B } ~~ Miss C' R (?)

V

S S S

674

631

MandFothers}-MissF

IA

m d

s s

675

632

r\ 1 A \ — Mr. A.

/A T

dF

Capt. A. /

I A

S F

676

ftQQ

" A. B.' \ jyj

NU

UOt>

and others /

\A

s s T (?)

677

634

Mr. H. H. E.1 ,

|A

9

Mr. E. /

\A

678

635

Mr. M. P. S. \ ™.,A
Mrs. S. ) - Chlld

/A
\A

Fr
a n

Mre

f A

d"R a n

679

635

S- I Mr

and others / yir-

-1 A

IA

-^ > e vjr,

a C

Mr. C. H. KO

BB

680

636

Mr. K. \ — Mr. K

J A

FS

Mrs. K.

A

mS

681

636

Mr. H. C. H.1 M g
MissS. |— Mrs. b

(A

St
a n

682

636

Mr. W. H. \ M R
Mrs. H. J-— Mr. K.

IA

CC

aN (?)

683

638

M^ W. \ _ MJ_ H.

/ A

f R

IA T (?)

A C

684

639

Mand-others}-M-L-(?)-

IA

Sm
Ff f f f r

CASES IN THE ADDITIONAL CHAPTER.

NO.

PAGE.

VOL.
n.

PERCIPIENT AND AGENT.

NATURE OP
IMPRESSION

RELATIONSHIP
OP P. TO A.

CCK

fi71

Mi«i<* Mr A TT W f!

V V

f R

686

675

Fraulein H. — Mrs. R

V

s s

687

676

G. —Mr. E. M. C

M. I

FR

688

679

Mme. B. — Mons. G.

Hypnotic

689
690

683

685

Mme. D. — Mons. J. H.
Mile. J. —Dr. D

sleep, &c.
Hypnotic
sleep, &c.
Hypnotic

aC
aC

691

687

Mr L —Mrs L.

sleep, &c.

aC
Hw

692

688

Mr. G. — Mr. E. T. R

I

FR

693

690

Mrs E. — Mme H ....

A

f r

694
695

692
693

Mr. J. G. F. R. — Miss Y
Mrs. T. — Mr. W. T

A
V

Fr

mS

696

697

694

695

Rev. R. M. H. — Uncle
Mrs. B. —Mr. Z

(A?)V
V

NU
aC

698

696

E. B. — C. Br

V A

f R

699

699

Dr. A. B. \ w

/V

AAC

700
701
7fV>

700
702

7O3

Mr. J. M. F. — Mrs. F.
Mr. H. E. M. — Miss R.

Mr M S a Mro

vy

D
D, V
r> v A

Hw
Fr
Fr

TABLE OF NUMBERED CASES. 723

An analysis of the above table shows that of 882 l percipients, 370,
or 42 per cent., were males, and 512, or 58 per cent., females. . Of 70S1
agents, 448, or 63-3 per cent., were males, and 260, or 36*7 per cent.,
females. The preponderance of female percipients cannot be assumed to
indicate any superior susceptibility in that sex to telepathic impressions
(see above, p. 3, last sentence of first note). The preponderance of male
agents is probably to be accounted for by the fact that men are more
liable than women to accidents and to violent deaths, and that a larger
proportion of them die at a distance from their nearest relatives and
friends.

Analysing the results of column V, we find that, out of 830 cases, the
agent stood to the percipient in the relation of

Parent or child in 193 cases, or 23 '3 per cent.
Brother or sister „ 122 ,, „ 14*7 ,,
Husband or wife „ 52 ,, ,, 6*3 ,,
Cousin, uncle, &c. 75 ,, ,, 9'0 ,,
Friend „ 263 „ „ 31-7 „

Acquaintance ,, 89 ,, „ 10'7 ,,
Stranger „ 36 „ „ 4'3

It will be seen that only in 47 per cent, of the cases is any blood-
relationship known to have existed between the parties ; and since in
many cases the relatives of the percipient will have naturally belonged
also to the circle of his intimate friends, it seems reasonable to conclude
that consanguinity, as such, has little if any predisposing influence in the
transmission of telepathic impressions. It may be suggested that the
comparative infrequency of such transmissions between husbands and
wives is probably due to the fact that it is commoner for married persons
than for blood-relations to be together, when one of the two dies.

It is noteworthy that, out of 36 cases in which the agent was a
stranger to the percipient, no less than 15 are collective cases in which an
intimate friend of the agent was one of the co-percipients, and may be
held to have constituted the link between the agent and the stranger
percipient. On the other hand, it is possible that the examples that have
been given of telepathic affection by strangers show somewhat less
than the true proportion ; as there may be cases belonging to this
category which for evidential purposes must be dismissed, the fact of
coincidence, which alone could distinguish them from purely subjective
hallucinations, having been unsuspected and unknown.

1 Where the same person has been concerned on more than one occasion as percipient
or airt-nt, each such experience has been reckoned for the purpose of the calculation as a
distinct case. Cases 88 and 90 have been omitted in reckoning the percipients, it being
doubtful which of the two persons concerned was the percipient, and which the agent ;
and cases 44, 88, 90, 133, 264, 316-325, 330-338, 387, 388, 436,459, 461,668, and 677 have been
omitted in reckoning the agents.

3 A 2

INDEX.

N.B. For many topics, the Synopsis at the beginning of each volume
forms (with the clue which the titles of the Chapters afford) a ready means
of reference ; and these are, for the most part, not included in the present
Index.

The page-numbers of the second volume are printed in italics.

PAGE
ABERCROMBIE, DR., Case described by, of hallucinations voluntarily

originated ...... Ixxxi

After-images ...... 489-91, 502, 505

Agency, telepathic, Various conditions of, in spontaneous cases . 229

Anonymous testimony, Worthlessness of .... 167-9

Anxiety, Effect of, in producing hallucinations .... 506-9

" Arrival Cases " . . 251-4,517-8, 96-100, 362-4, 530-2, 588-9, 623-7

Auditory hallucinations, Different proportion of to visual, in the purely

subjective and in the telepathic class . . . 22-3

Numerical estimate relating to, in the two classes . . 12-6

of an internal sort ..... 480-2, 119-20

non-verbal and rudimentary . 222-5, 403-5, 502-3, 125-32, 568-74

due to anxiety ....... 509-10

— due to expectancy ...... 514

Automatic actions telepathically produced (See Unconscious percipience)

Awe, Effect of, in producing hallucinations .... 510-2

BAILLARGER, DR., on " psycho-sensorial " hallucinations . . 461-2

- — — Defects of his view ...... 465-6

Ball, Prof. , on various points connected with hallucinations 467, 470, 479-80

— Case recorded by . . . . . . . 476

Barrett, Prof. W. F., Paper of, read before the British Association in 1876 13

Experiments of, in thought-transference . . 20-9, 59-61

Bernheim, Dr., Experiments of, in hypnotic hallucinations . 469-70, 472
Bell-sounds, Hallucinations of . . . . 502-3, 127-9, 233-5

Binet, A., on certain hypnotic hallucinations .... 468-70
Binsfeld, Tractatus de Sortttegiis . . . . 175, 183

Blood, a prominent feature in the telepathic percept 373, 84, 403, 430, 433, 481
Bodin, Ddmonomanie ..... 173, 177, 180, 182, 478

726 INDEX.

PAGE

Boguet, Discours des Sorciers ..... 178, 180, 183

Boismont, Dr. Brierre de, Spurious cases of collective hallucination

recorded by . . . . . . 186-7

" Borderland " hallucinations, Various sorts of . . . 389-92

Importance of distinguishing from dreams . . . 393-7

Brewster's view of visual hallucinations .... 465

Brougham, Lord, Remarks of, on his own experience . . . 396-7

CARDAN, De Varietate Eerum ..... 479, 555

Cards and other objects, Experimental transferences of ideas of 21-9, 31-5,

37, 661-4

Casaubon, Meric, Of Credulity and Incredulity .... 184
Casual experiments ..... 81-85, 655-7, 665

Census of dreams of death ...... 303-10

• of sensory hallucinations ...... 6-24

Centrifugal origin of hallucinations, strongly supported by telepathic

examples ....... 570-1

Cevennes, Spurious marvels in the ..... Ixxiv-v

Chambers, Dr. T. King, Case of simultaneous hallucinations

recorded by . . . . . . 198-9

Chance, how far an explanation of the facts adduced (See Probabilities)
Charcot, Dr., Form of unilateral hallucination recorded by . . 471-2

Children, Percipience of, ("collective" cases not included) 245, 246, 235, 248-9,

423, 519, 555, 581

Chiltoff, Dr. A. M. , Experiment of, in thought-transference . . 665

Clairvoyance . . . . . 266-7, 555-6, 286-7

Difference between telepathic and independent . . 368-9, 669

— Telepathic, in reciprocal cases . . . 161-2, 289, 303-10

— Independent, often assumed without any sufficient warrant 329-30, 335

— Relation of to collective cases .... 269, 289-90

alleged of Swedenborg ...... xlviii

Cioudy or misty appearance of visual phantasms 521, 526, 527, 557, xxii, 182,

450, 481, 513
Coincidences, apt to be regarded as either accidental or supernatural 397, 461-%

significant in virtue of frequency, not of oddness . . 2

Tendency to exaggerate the closeness of . . Ixxv-vii, 144-5, 156-7

Cold, Sensation of, at the time of a telepathic affection . . 210, 527, 37,

122, 150, 180, 249, 500
Collectivity of percipience, in what sense a proof of objectivity in

the percept ...... 168-70, 190-2

Collusion, Hypothesis of, in experiments in thought-transference . 18-20
Necessity of, if experiments in thought-transference are to be

explained as tricks . ... . . . 22-3

Community of sensation, first noticed in connection with the hypnotic state 11

— shown in experiments in the transference of tastes and of pains 51-8,

324-31, 339, 344, 666-8

Compact, previous, between agent and percipient, Possibly effect of . 66
Instances of ... 395, 419, 427, 527, 63, 477, 489, 497

INDEX. 727

PAGE

Contact, the essential condition for muscular guidance, all possibility

of which must be precluded in experiments in thought-transference 17-8
Contact, Alleged effect of, in certain cases of hallucination . . 189, 359

Contemporary evidence, Importance of . . . .• . 13, 274

Cotta, The Infallible, True and Assured Witch . . . . 120, 182

Creery family, Experiments with the . . . . . 20-31

DAGONBT, DR., Les Maladies Mentcdes . . . . 476,480,484

D' Autun, L1 IncrMulit^ Scavante . . . . . 180, 184

Dead, Phantasms of the, how connected with the present inquiry 190-2, 214

Evidence for, inconclusive . . . 612

Death-cases, Large proportion of . . . 303, 25-6

Deferment or latency of telepathic impressions . 56, 70-1, 201-2, 265, 519

De 1'Ancre, Tableau de V Inconstance des mauvais Anges et Demons 117, 173
Del Rio, Disquisitiones Magicce . . . .179, 180, 181, 182

Dessoir, Max, Experiments of, in thought-transference . . 642-53

Development of hallucinations, Gradual, in the purely subjective

class . . . . . . 520-2

in the telepathic class .. . 522-34

Diagrams, Experiments in the reproduction of . . . 35-51, 642-53

Disappearance of visual phantasms, Gradual, a feature common to

purely subjective and to telepathic specimens . . 573, 97

Instances of . 444, 446, 454, 521, 527, 552, 96, 176, 182,

214, 246, 453, 467, 503, 512, 522, 628, 629

Special modes of . . . 432, 559, 573, 239, 605

on sudden speech or movement, a feature common to purely

subjective and to telepathic specimens . . . 573, 91

Instances of . 207, 414, 417, 436, 530, 542, 564, 60, 91,

451, 461, 464, 491, 500, 616

Door opening or shutting, Hallucination of . 214, 454, 532, IfiQ, 492, 497,

543, 612, 626, 633, 694, 697

" Double Consciousness " . . . . . 69-70

Dreams, Relation of, to waking hallucinations . . 296-7, 484-5, 539, 547

Evidential weakness of, as a class . - . . . 298-9

of death, Census and computation relating to . . . 303-10

Dress and appurtenances of visual phantasms . 540-6, 569-70, 90-6, 294-7
Drowning-cases, Large proportion of . . . . 26

EDGEWORTH, F. Y., his remarks on the application of the theory

of probabilities to certain experimental results . . 26

and to certain spontaneous results . . . . xxi

Emotional impressions, Evidential weakness of, as a class . . 269-70

Error, Possibility and effects of, in observation . . • . 123-5

in inference .-•'.. . . . 125-6

in narration ..... 126-0

in memory ..... 129-31

Esdaile, Dr., Importance of his testimony .... 12-3, 88

Evidence, experimental, Necessity of accumulating . . .19, 274

Difference in the nature of, in experimental and in spontaneous

cases ... . 114-5

728 INDEX.

PAGE

Evidence, for telepathy, contrasted with that for other alleged marvels 115-22
for phantasms of the living, contrasted with that for

phantasms of the dead . . . Ixiii-iv, 121-2, 512

Points of, required in a typical case of spontaneous telepathy . 131

of the percipient as to facts . . . . . 133-8

as to dates ..... 140-6

Description of the, admitted to this book : its cumulative

strength ....... 158-66

its deficiencies ...... 167-9

Expectancy, Effect of, in producing hallucinations . . . 612-7

Experimental and spontaneous telepathy, Connection between 110-3, 171-2, 271
Experiments (See under various headings — Community of sensation,

Cards, Diagrams, &c.)
Externalisation of hallucinations, Various degrees in the . 480-3, 29-38

"FACES IN THE DARK" . ... • . . . . 473, 479, 492

Falck, De Dcemonologid recentiorum Autorum . . . 462, 168

Fechner, Experiment of, in hallucination of colour . . . 462-3

1 ere", Dr. , Experiments of, in certain cases of hypnotic hallucination . 468

Foliehdeux . ... . . . . 458, 280

Fragmentary appearances . . 416, 504, xxv, 33-4, 59, 512, 526

GALTON, F., on the sympathy of twins ... . . . 279

Gifford, G. , Dialogue concerning Witches .... 176

— — — Discourse of Subtill Practices . . . .179

Glanvil, Sadducismus Triumphatus . . . 118, 174, 178-81, 184

Godelmaiin, Tractatus de Magiis , . . . 175, 179

Griesinger, Die Pathologie und Therapie der Psychiscfien Krankheiten 461, 467,

477, 494
Guthrie, M., Experiments organised by .... 36-58

HALLUCINATIONS OF THE SENSES

Census of . . . . . . . 6-24, 133-4 .

Proportion of various types of, in the subjective and the

telepathic classes ...... 22-5

Psychological identity of with dreams . . 484-5, 539, 547, 702

Resemblances between subjective and telepathic specimens of 496-500

572-3, xxii

how far transferable from one person to another 183, 224-5, 279-82

Epidemic . . . . . . . 187

- Hypnotic . . . .... . . . 187-8

-Traditional ....... 189

" Particular," i.e., unshared by persons present with the perci-
pient, frequent in the telepathic class . . . 573, 105

Visual instances of 210, 218, 552, 560, 42, 43, 61, 163, 212, 237,

256, 455, 484, 495, 513, 517, 522, 542, 555, 557

Auditory instances of . 223, 452, 100, 104, 106, 109, 222,

485, 568, 569, 580, 581, 584
Hartmann, E. von., on Spiritism . . . . .184

INDEX. 729

PAGE

Hereditary or family susceptibility to telepathic influence . 573, 132

Herschell, Sir J. F. W., Experience of, in hallucinations . 465, 472, 487

Holland, A Treatise against Witchcraft . . . . 175, 179

Holland, Sir H. , Cases of hallucination recorded by . . 479, 481

Hutchinson, F., Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft 174, 175, 176, 177,

180, 184

Hypnotic effects, Telepathic production of . 88-91, 332-3, 344, 676-87

Hypnotism, Importance of, in psychical inquiries . . . xlii-iii

IDEAS, Experimental transference of, involving more

than a single image or word . . .82, 94-5, 340-3, 345-8

Illness, Possible effect of, in heightening telepathic susceptibility 360, 397,

424, 147, 162, 164, 176, 345-53, 358, 390, 464-5,515, 703

Illusions, Collective, distinguished from hallucinations . . . 184-6

— " Hypnagogic " ..... 390,400-1,473-4

— Telepathic, quite conceivable ..... 62-3

Imagery and symbolism of telepathic percepts 341-68, 539-54, 298-9, 412-27,

497, 612-3
Inhibition of utterance or of particular movements in another person,

by the power of the will ..... 58-62

JOLLY, PROF. F. , Experiments of, in auditory hallucinations . . 470-1

KAHLBAUM, Types of hallucination observed by 472, 476, 490, 491, 495
Kandinsky, View of, on hallucinations ..... 494
Koppe, 011 auditory hallucinations . . 467, 471, 475, 480, 495

Kraepelin, Ueber Trugwahrnehmungen .... 490, 495

Krafft-Ebing, Die Sinmsdelirien .... 407, 476, 487, 502

LANG, A,, on popular superstitions .... 122, 550

Lawson, D., Tryals of the Neiv England Witches . . 477, 508

Lecky, W. E. H., on witchcraft . . «f. . . 177-9,183-5

Lie"beault, Dr. , Experiments of, in thought-transference . . 657-60

Light (See Luminosity) .......

Limitation, Arbitrary, of the interval of time in spontaneous tele-
pathic cases to 12 hours .... 139-40, 511
Locality, Occasional influence of . . . . 268, 301-2
Loudun, Hysterical epidemic at . . . . .119
Lowell, J. Russell, Features of subjective hallucination described by . xxii
Luminosity, a frequent feature of visual hallucinations, both in the

subjective and in the telepathic class .... 550-1

—Examples of 417, 436, 437, 444, 550, 557, 561, 31, 46, 72, 76, 176,

181, 182, 204, 215, 416, 455, 459, 460, 475, 477, 478, 509, 512,

522, 611, 622, 629, 703-4
Lyall, Sir A. C., Asiatic Studies . . . . . .183

MAYO, DR., Truths contained in Popular Superstitions . . 8

McGraw, Dr., Observations of, on some rare features in the " willing-
game " . . . . , . .15

730 INDEX.

PAGE

Mackenzie, SirG., The Laws and Customs of Scotland . . . 177, 183
Magnan, Dr., Record of dramatic hallucinations by . . 477-8
Mallei^ Maleficarum . . . . : . . . 116, 118, 173
Marillier, L., Record of subjective hallucinations by . 521, 33, 73, 99
Marshall, Prof. A. , on probabilities ..... xxii
Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World . . . 181, 184, 477
Maudsley, Dr. , on certain alcoholic hallucinations . . . 390
Maury, Record of an ilhision hypnagogique by . . . . 390
Mazzini, Case of collective hallucination described by . . 188
Mesmerism, Early connection of thought-transference with . . 11-3
Erroneous ideas of the power of . . . .87, 92-3

(See Hypnotic effects)

Mickle, Dr. W. J., on the cerebral seat of hallucinations . . 488-9

Misrecognition on the percipient's part . . . 428, 429, 390, 422-3,

582-3, 633-4
Mistakes of identity, how far an explanation of alleged telepathic

phantasms ...... 62-3, 243-4

More, G. , A True Discourse against S. Harsnet . . . 119, 181, 182

Motor-form of thought-transference, Experiments in the . 62-81, 89-94

Movement, a frequent feature of visual phantasms, both of the purely

subjective and of the telepathic class . . 432, 573

Musical hallucinations ..... 503, 221-3, 639-41

NEWNHAM, REV. P. H., Record of experiments by ... 63-70

Subjective hallucinations described by . . 475, 481, 492, 72

Nicolai's hallucinations ...... 458-9, 492

Numbers, Experimental transference of ideas of . 25, 34, 653-4, 661-4

OCHOROWICZ, DR. J., Experiments of, in thought-transference . . 660-4

PAIN, Experimental transferences of (See Community of sensation)

Spontaneous transferences of, rare . . . . 189-90

Parant, Dr. V., Cases of hallucination recorded by . . .476, 490

Paterson, Cases of hallucination recorded by . . 474, 38, 133

Paul, C. Kegan, Experiments of, in community of sensation, &c. . 666-9

Percipience, telepathic, Various types of, in spontaneous cases . . 186-7

Physical basis for telepathic phenomena very hard to conceive . 111-13, 314-5
— discomfort on the percipient's part . . 197, 273, 280, 371, 374

Pick, Dr. A. , Records of hallucinations by . . . . 472, 487

Pitcairn, Criminal Trials of Scotland ..... 176, 177
Pollock, W. H., Case of collective illusion recorded by . . 185

Porta, J. Baptista, Magia Naturalis ..... 175

Prediction, Power of, how far a test of scientific achievement . . 1-4

Presence, Alleged feeling of, actual or potential hallucination . 483-4, 528, 138
Probabilities, Theory of, applied to experiments in

thought-transference ... 26, 31-5, 73-6, 653-4
applied to spontaneous telepathic occurrences 303-10, 12-21

INDEX. 731

PAGE

Psychical aspect of telepathic phenomena, that to which this work

is confined . . . . . . - . 113

Specialised meaning of the term ..... 5

Research, its peculiar difficulties and obligations 4-6, 130, 167-9,

6-8, 273

Society for ....... vii-x

— American Society for . . . . . 35, 51

Psychologic Physiologique, Socie'te' de . '. . . 882-3, 679

" Psycho-sensorial " hallucinations ..... 461-4

Common misunderstanding of the term . . 479

RAPP, Die Hexenprocesse . . . . . . .176

Eapport, Different sorts of ...... 265-9

Reciprocal telepathic affections ...... 227, 153

often assumed on quite inadequate grounds . . 154

Apparent rarity of, how explicable . . . 167, 303

Recognised phantasms, Different proportion of to unrecognised, in

the purely subjective and in the telepathic class . . 24-5

Recognition, Absence of, generally but not always an

evidential defect . . . ' . 220, 117, 137, 565

— of a phantasm sometimes delayed . . 520-7, 71, 82, 464

Re'gis, Dr., on unilateral hallucinations . . . . .. 467

Religious investiture of telepathic impressions . . . 552-3, 414

Remarks, Interchange of, with hallucinatory figure 476, 460, 505, 524, 584, 607
Remy, Doemonolatria ..... 175, 180, 181, 182

Repeated apparition of the same person .... 77-90

occurrence of a telepathic experience to the same person . 196

®p iyy
%&, i i

Repetition of telepathic dreams after an interval . . . 357-8

—Instances of 330, 340, 343, 357, 365, 418, 424, 447, 701

— of telepathic hallucinations after an interval . . 414-5, 105

—Visual instances of 414, 415, 445, 59, 467, 482, 500

Auditory instances of 409, 100, 113, 120, 123, 228, 229,

473, 631, 633-4, 635

Reuss, La Sorcetterie au 16me et 17 me Si&cle . . . 176, 183

Richet, Dr. C., his experiments in thought-transference 31-3, 72-81, 66^-5

- L'Homme et I' Intelligence .... 118, 173, 462

Rink', Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo .... 550

Rudimentary hallucinations, visual ..... 73-6

- auditory . . . 125-32, 570-6, 685-9

Rumour, Possible telepathic spread of . . . . . 365

ST. M£DARD, The Conmdsioivnaires of . . . . 120.

Scot, R., The Discovery of Witchcraft ..... 175

Second-hand evidence, Defects and errors of . Lxxvii, 148-57, 1&6, 539

— Sort of, admitted to the Supplement . . . . . , 822

"Second sight," Remarks on ...... 535

732 INDEX.

PAGE

bensation, Community of (see Community)

— Telepathic production of by will . . . 97-109, 671-6

Sensory and non-sensory telepathic effects distinguished . . 186-7

Sidgwick, Prof., on the moral factor in experiments . . . 19-20

Sikes, Wirt, British Goblins ..... Ixxx, 547

Simon, Dr. Max, on a peculiar type of hallucination . . . 481

Solidity, apparent, Presence or absence of, in visual hallucinations . 87-8
Spee, Gautio Criminalis . . . . . 176

Spina, Quoestio de Strigibus ... . . . 174, 175

Sully, J. , on a particular type of hallucination .... 477

Supernormal and supersensuous, Meaning to be attached to the words xlvi, 7
Supplement, Position of the, in the evidential case for telepathy . 321-8

TACTILE cases, hard to establish ...... 225

hallucinations, Rarity of . . . . . . 133-4

Taine, his special use of the word hallucination . . . 459

Tamburini, on the physiology of hallucinations . . . . 487

Tartarotti, Del Congresso Nocturno delle Lamie .... 175-6
Taste, Experimental transferences of (see Community of Sensation)
Telepathy, Two distinct branches of — the experimental and the

spontaneous ....... 8-9

• Important differences between them, evidentially, and

theoretically ...... 110-3, 114-5

• their true theoretic connection .... 171-2

Spontaneous, two great divisions of — the sensory and the non-
sensory class — which are further subdivided . . . 186-7

Relation of, to religious and to materialistic conceptions . 1-lvii

Theosophy, so-called, Exposure of ..... xlvii
" Thought-reading," Spurious exhibitions of .... 14-5, 17
Thought-transference, a preferable term to "thought-reading" .. 10-1
a less wide term than telepathy . . 11, 63

Conditions of satisfactory experiments in, and

importance of a cumulative proof . . . 17-9, 85

Three, Prevalence of the number, in accounts of abnormal phenomena 229
Transitional cases, (or experiments to which the percipient is

not knowingly a party) .- . . . 86,110,671-87

Importance of . . . . . . 171

Difficulty of obtaining accounts of ... 109, 675

Tuke, Dr. Hack, Case of collective illusion recorded by . . . 185

Tunes, Possible telepathic transference of .... 233-4

Twins, Telepathic transferences between . . 279-83, 370, 46

Two (or more) phantasmal figures, Proportion of appearances of,
about equal in hallucinations of the purely subjective
and of the telepathic class ..... 546

. Instances of . 450, 499, 529, 535, 544, 98, 144, 456,

469, 475, 482, 496, 506, 523, 534, 6%9
Two or three senses, Different proportion of hallucinations affecting, in

the purely subjective and in the telepathic class . . 2S-4

INDEX. 733

PAGE

UNCONSCIOUS agency in experimental cases . . . 78-9, 84, 670-1

- percipience - . 62-81, 84, 293, 379, 670-1

-intelligence . . . Ixii, 69-70, 230-1, 313-4

Unconsciousness of the agent, Frequent, at the time when a spontaneous

transference takes place ..... 230-1

Instances of, (swoon, coma, &c.) . 194, 406, 435, 545, 548, 563,

569, 112, 394, 419, 517, 609
Unrecognised phantasms, Different proportion of to recognised, in the

purely subjective and in the telepathic class . . 24-5

figures 218, 427, 452, 530, xxi, 61, 236, 256, 468-9, 493, 502, 517,

619, 694

voices uttering words 227, 409, 553, 100, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119,

120, 122, 123, 137, 164, 4™, 473, 561, 563, 565, 568, 584, 692

VISUAL hallucinations, Different proportion of to auditory, in the purely

subjective and in the telepathic class . . . 22-3

Numerical estimate relating to, in the two classes . . 16-20

due to anxiety ....... 506-9

due to awe ....... 510-2

due to expectancy ...... 512-4

— Rudimentary ...... 73-6, 192-4

Voisin, Dr. , on various types of hallucination . . . 465, 473, 495

WAGSTAFFE, The Question of Witchcraft debated . . . 183, 184

Webster, on "possession" ...... 182

Wier, De Prcestigiis Dcemoiwm . . . . 175, 179, 180, 181, 183

Will, Relation of, to telepathic experiments .... 92-3

- Experiments in the silent exercise of . 58-62, 89-91, 93-4, 676-7

- Effect of, in the production of the hypnotic state 88, 332-8, 679-87
"Willing-game," Results obtained at the, due to the interpretation

of slight physical signs .... 14-5, 642

Occasional hints of some further cause .... 15

Witchcraft, Lack of evidence for the spurious marvels of Ixxiii, 116-8, 172-7

Mr. Lecky's treatment of ..... 177-9

Certain genuine phenomena of, how explicable . . 179-83

Words and names, Experimental transferences of . 23-5, 27-9, 64, 66, 69,

74-9, 82-4, 655-7, 665

Wundt, on " psychical energy " ..... xli-ii
. on hallucinations . . . . ' 461, 474, 476, 487, 38

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Experiments in Muscle-Reading and Thought-Transference. By MAX DESSOIR.
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